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From the collection of the
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San Francisco, California
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SOKC/W
INDEX
VOLUME LXXIII
JANUARY 1937 — DECEMBER 1937
NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
112 EAST 19TH STREET
Index
VOLUME LXXIII
January 1937 — December 1937
The material in this index is arranged under authors and subjects and
in a few cases under titles. Anonymous articles and paragraphs are
entered under their subject. The precise wording of titles has not been
retained where abbreviation or paraphrase has seemed more desirable.
Abbott. Edith, 181, 182, 191, 208, 361
On public assistance, 181
Portrait, 155, 190
Abbott's The Tenements of Chicago, 60
Accounting, uniform system, 296
Adams, Bess (letter), 395
Adamson's So You're Going to a
Psychiatrist, 122
Additon, Henrietta, 162
Adkins case. 110
Administration, 185, 186, 399
Administrative Management Committee
(portraits). 45
Adoption of children, 362
Standards, 386
Adult education, 158, 197
University of Florida, 350
WPA's project, 353
Air stewardesses. 53
Airports and airplanes
Health measures, 160
Alabama, 395
Burglary, 48
Child welfare problem in, 81
Alexander, Franz, 190
Alexander, P. W., 377
Alexander's The Medical Value of
Psychoanalysis, 30
Aliens, children of unemployed, 350
Relief and, 321
Allegheny County, 159
Allen, Eleanor, Employment service —
new style, 216
Allen, F. E., portrait, 189
Alleys. Washington. D. C., 19
Altmeyer, A. J., 187
Amalgamated Cjothing Workers, 80
American Association of Social
Workers, 201
Convention in Washington, 71
Membership, 232
N'eu members, 85
Unemployment protection 297
AF of L, CIO and, 355
American Friends Service Committee,
111
American Medical Association, 225,
372
American Public Health Association,
annual meeting. 339
American Public Welfare Association,
3. 18. 19
Americana, 305
Amidon, Beulah, Shall we amend?, 8
Amoskeag Mfg. Co., 321
Anderson. Nels, 188
Anderson's Children in the Family, 239
Andersons reform, 77
Anxiety, 238
Appointments, 233, 234
Aptitudes, 240
Arizona. 51, 257
Relief, 243, 244
Stanford, Governor, 351
Arkansas, 355
Civil service law, 227
Libraries, 116
Relief, 243. 244
Aronovici and McCalmont's Catching
Up With Housing, 124
Art. 1_>
.Wh. Berta, 348
A SOW, 11
AICP, 56, 386
Atlanta, Negro boys, 117
Atwater, Pierce. 185
Auburn plan, 277
Austin, Tex., 56
Authority and the Individual. 238
Automobile industry, union clinic, 323
Automobile workers, 196
Automobiles, deaths in accidents, 230
B
Babies, 60
Bacteriology course, 161
Bailey, Miss, 3, 42, 43, 75, 106, 144,
222, 316
Baker, George F., 359
Baker, H. C., 200
Social workers grope for unity, 179
Baker, Jacob, 255
Baker, Newton D., 90
A clean slate for a fresh start, 7
Baker and Traphagen's The Diagnosis
and Treatment of Behavior-Problem
Children, 239
Ball Foundation, 160
Ballard's Social Institutions, 169
Baltimore, personnel study, 85
Relief, 157
Relief purges, 354
Social Security Board, labor trouble,
389
Bancroft, F. C., 264
Bane, Frank, 291
Banks, pensions, 324
Bar associations, 15
Barker's Live Long and Be Happy, 30
Bassett's Zoning, 238
Batchelor, C. D., 262
Bates, Sanford, 160, 190
Leadership, the business of, 375
Portrait and note, 57
Bate's Prisons and Beyond, 91
Bauer's Health Education of the Public,
399
Baum, W. M., Social work at the Paris
Exposition, 314
Beauty, drive to create, 12
Behavior, 239
Factors Determining Human
Behavior, 205
Behavior as it is behaved, 12, 44, 77,
108, 146
Behaviorism, 270
Bennett, J. V., Horse collars and
prisons, 277
Bentley's Problem Children, 30
Bentley's Superior Children, 270
Berry, G. L., 15
Between Spires and Stacks, 7
Biddle, George, murals (ills.), 98
Big Brother and Big Sister Federation,
83
Bigelow's Family Finance, 92
Biggers, J. D., 322
Bingham, William, 2nd, 325
Bingham's Aptitudes and Aptitude
Testing, 240
Birth control, 48, 294
Bootleg devices. 295
Clinics, 39. 294
Massachusetts. 350
Million dollars for, 287
Puerto Rico, 199
Births, perilous. 386
Black-Connery bill, 193
Blacker's A Social Problem Group?,
302
Blind, the, 27, 328
Employment service for, 85
WPA projects for, 353
Blough. Roy. 185
Board Member's Manual, 399
Boarding out delinquent children, 217
Boards, comments on. 67
Policy decisions, 343
Social agency boards and how to serve
on them, 342. 378
Bogert and Porter's Dietetics Simplified,
171
Bogoslovsky's The Ideal School, 60
Bookman, C. M., 73
Books
Reviews, 28. 60, 91, 121, 164, 204,
236, 268, 300, 331, 363, 396
Short reviews, 64, 208, 272, 399
Borst, H. W. (letter), 330
Boston, birth control, 350
Nurses, 158
Relief, 82
Social service exchange as subject for
mural (ill.), 17
Training for boys on probation, 83
Boudreau, F. G., 87
Bouquet Department, 235
Bowers, G. A., 389
Boy Scouts, 88, 202
Boys Clubs, 88
Boys' Clubs of America. 57, 375
Boys' eye view of life, 7
Brace up, Theodore, 316
Brackenbury's Patient and Doctor, 91
Braden, Norman, 74
Bradley, R. M., Joseph Lee (letter), 299
Brawley's Negro Builders and Heroes,
367
Breckenridge, S. P., 188
Breen's Partners in Play, 93
Brevis, H. J. (letter), 27
Bridgman, Laura, 315
Britain, mothers of, 297
Security, surplus fund, 293
Britten, R. H., 340
Bromberg's The Mind of Man, 363
Bronner's New Light on Delinquency,
62
Bronze Booklets, 270
Brooklyn, N. Y., Bureau of Charities,
392
Survey of facilities and needs, 56
Brookwood Labor College, 389
Brown, Mr. and Mrs. George Warren.
13
Brown, Harvey D., death, 298
Brown, Josephine C., 186, 298
Brown Memorial Building, St. Louis
(withill.). 13
Brownlow, Louis, portrait in group, 45
Brownrigg, W. E., 327
Browns, two Miss, 89
Brown's Mind. Medicine, and Meta-
physics, 121
Bryan's Adminstrative Psychiatry, 64
Buffalo, N. Y., Planniner research, 358
Bundy, S. E., A sidelight on the
N.Y.A., 252
Burns, A. T., 104
Burr, C. W., Little 'dobe homes in the
West, 37
Burrow's Human Conflict, 331
Business men, 318
Butler, Amos W.. death, 298
Butler's Playgrounds, 29
Byrnes committee, 224
Cabot's Christianity and Sex, 396
Cahn and Bary's Welfare Activities . . .
in California, 1850-1934, 62
California, cotton camps. 231
Old age assistance. 324
Public welfare. 19
Relief, 244, 245
SRA, 354
Social workers, 85
Transiency, 307, 398
Cameron, M. T. (letter), 395
Campbell, H. G., 158
Camps, 161
Girls', 21
Canada, Medical services, 200
Cancer, 118, 260, 390
Memorial Hospital, 260
National Institute, 260
New York State commission, 327
Research, 260
Women's Field Army, for control, 14,
260
Cancer Institute, 361
Cannibals, 80
Carnegie Institute of Technology, 160
Former students, 233
Carr, Charlotte, 50, 264
Carr, Saunders, Professor, 234
Carter, A. B., 187
Cartoons (ills.), 210
Case work, 238, 271, 299
Case work and group work, 102, 138
In administration of relief, 38
Catholic Charities, 361
Character, lack in Cleveland boys and
girls, 7
Charity, racketeering, 284
Charity Church of Christ, 284
Chenoweth and Selkirk's School Health
Problems, 269
Chests and Councils. 163
Chicago, Council and social legislation,
232
Jewish Children's Bureau (League),
294
Mergers, 232
Recreational directory, 230
Relief, 18
Relief Administration, 226
Relief chiselers, 382
Relief strikers, 385
Social Service Year Book. 392
Social work Publicity Council, 119
Social workers' salaries and quali-
fications. 232
Taverns, 83
Teaching by radio, 322
Tenements, 60
Unemployables, 373
Year Book. 86
Chickering, M. A., States look at public
welfare, 135
Child Health Day, 119
Child labor, 50, 110, 363
Kentucky, 355
Murals by Biddle illustrating. 98
North and South Carolina, 258
Proposed legislation, 225
Sugar Act and, 322
Child labor amendment, 48, 110, 153
Fight to ratify, 79
New York and other legislatures, 112
Child marriages, 293
Child neurology, 117
Child Study Association, 279
Child welfare, 55, 116, 198
Alabama, 81
Publications, 55
Child Welfare League, health advice,
116
Children, 207, 293
Adopting, 362, 386
Assistance to, 75
Children aren't trash, 75
Constitutional amendment in the
interest of, 110
Crippled, 294
Deaf -blind, 315
Deafness, 327
Dependent, assistance for, 354
Detroit, student training for, 386
Gifted, 270, 319
Hostility patterns in, 304
Needy. 198
Of aliens, 350
Problems, 30
Publications. 198
Summer outings, 294
Yale course on, 326
Children's Bureau, 157
New committee, 117
Salute to (dinner at 25th anni-
versary), 101
Childs, S. "W.. 260
Childs Memorial Fund, 260
China. 166
Birth control, 294
IV
War children, 383
Christensen, Viggo, 359
Christmas seal campaign, 359
Red Cross and, 326
Chronic diseases, New York hospital
for, 260
Chronic illness, cost in New York City,
86
Chronic patients project, 199
Church Conference of Social Work, 191
Churches, social agencies and, 359
Chute, C. L., These juvenile courts of
ours, 40
Cincinnati, flood, 73
Cities, public health, 22
Citizen boards of public welfare, 258
Citizen service, 19, 56, 230, 296
Publication, 20
Citizenship, college training for, 21
Civil service, 224, 267
State action, 227, 351
CCC, 158, 271
Here to stay?, 18
Kansas, 258
Legislation, 320
Tuberculosis in, 261
Camp, wedding, 15
Clague, Ewan, 187
Social work and social security, 5
Clapp, R. C., 7
Clark, C. E., 9
Clark and Roberts' People of Kansas,
336
Clergy, personals, 265
Cleveland, 90, 296
Children, 198
Relief chiselers, 382
Welfare Federation survey, 7
Clevenger, Louise, 187, 392
Close, Kathryn (letter), 235
Charity racketeering 284
Clover, G. F., death, 265
Coal industry, 80
Kentucky, 350
Colcord, J. C., 90
(letter), 183
West, the, is still different, 243
Cole's Character and Christian Educa-
tion, 122
Cole and Crowe's Recent Trends in
Rural Planning, 364
Coler, B. S., 285
College graduates, placements, 193
Colleges, 57, 264, 364
Faculties, 327
Training for citizenship, 21
Collins, Marietta, death, 328
Colorado old age assistance, 292, 355
Pensions, 51
Public assistance, 291
Relief and pensions, 320
Columbia University, 105
Graduate placements, 193
CIO, AF of L and, 355
Commodities, surplus, 385
Common welfare, 14, 47. 79, 110, 152,
192, 224, 254, 288, 318, 350, 382
Notes 289, 319
Commonwealth Fund, 160
Community chest campaigns, 21, 232
Community chests and councils, changes,
328
Community Chests and Councils, Inc.,
22, 326
Community organization, 190
Community planning, 191
Compensation. See Unemployment
compensation
Comte, Auguste, 171
Conant. R. K., 185, 360
Congress, 351
Wages and hours bill, 387
Connecticut, pauper laws and legal
settlements, 113
Constitution, amendments, types under
discussion, 8
Consumers, 259, 318
Consumers' National Federation, 202
Contraceptive clinic, 39
Convicts, 193
Cooperative Alliance, Congress, 52
Cooperative Institute, 259
Cooperatives, 52
Management school, 52
Publications, 52
Self-help, 346
Copeland, Senator, 47, 48
Corn. E. W. (letter), 59
Corwin, R. G., 191
Cotton, 363
Cotton textile industry, 259
Council for Industrial Progress. 15
Counseling service, 85
Couzens' Committee, 217
Cowgill. E. L,, 69
Coyle, G. L., Case work and group
work, 102, 138
Coyle's Studies in Group Behavior, 239
Credit unions, 204
Crime, 190, 261, 268, 388
Committee on Control, New York
City, 192
Georgia, 388
Interstate Commission on, 319
Ind
e x
Kinds and location, 261
Responsibility question, 289
Crime prevention, 83
New proposals, S3
Release procedures, study, 83
Crime Prevention Institute, 83
Crippled children, 294
Cross's Newcomers and Nomads in
California, 398
Cummings and McFarland's Federal
Justice, 122
Cushman, R. E., 9
Czechoslovakia, 293
Daily News, The, 199
Dancing, 146
Davidson and Anderson's Occupational
Mobility in an American Commu-
nity, 303
Davis, Jerome, 14
Davis, M. M., Public medical care, 371
Tough facts about hospitals, 219
Davis' Public Medical Services, 301
Davis' They Shall Not Want, 164
Dayton, Ohio, rating of restaurants, 22
Deaf -blind children, 315
Deafness in children, 327
Deardorff, N. R., 27
Deeply felt (letter), 329
Deaths, 26, 58, 89, 120, 265, 298, 328,
361, 393
Deering, N. H., 119
Delinquency, 28, 62, 206
Boarding out delinquent children, 217
Course on, 326
Jacksonyille, Fla., survey, 344
Deming, Dorothy, 341
Dental clinics, 86
Dental hygiene, 342
Dent's The Human Machine, 270
Denver, Associated Charities, 289
Birth survey, 261
Memorial, 201
Pension plans, 384
Relief, 82
Detroit, broken homes, 354
Franklin Street Settlement, 359
Social Clinics, 296
Student volunteers, 116
Training by practice, 386
Tuberculosis, 53
Devine, E. T., portrait, '153
Dewey, Richard, 62
Diabetes, 118
Dickson's Story of King Cotton, 363
Dictation, simplified formula for, 221
Diphtheria, 86
Disability, 168
Disaster loans, 115
Disease, 390
District of Columbia, 259, 389
Alley Dwelling Authority, 286
Doctors, 91, 200,396
Dollard's Caste and Class in a Southern
Town, 331
Douglass' Secondary Education, 398
Dowd's Control in Human Societies, 32
Dowdell, M. P. (letter), 267
Drama, 12
Producing a play, 13
Draper, M. C., 392
Dreis' A Handbook of Social Statistics
of New Haven, Conn., 92
Drinkers, 363
Drugs, 47
Durfee's To Drink or Not to Drink, 363
Dykstra, C. A., 47
E
Easley, R. M., 254
Eastern Cooperative Wholesale, 260
Education, 84, 236, 237, 322, 389
American Education Week, 322
Building for social work education
(with ill.), 13
Federal aid, 21, 84
For social practice, 139
Health by, 123
Publications, 85, 389
Report and record, 21, 322
Youth and, 1 58
Education for Democracy (radio pro-
gram), 197
F.ilucation in the Family, 119
Educators, 268
Personal notes, 234
Ego urge, 146
Elections, 234, 361
Electric utilities. 32
Eliot, T. D. (letter), 90
Elliott, G. L., 189
ERB, 320
Employability, 321
Employers, delinquent, 389
Employment outlook, 5
Straws in the wind, 382
Employment service — new style, 216
Employment services, 229
England, Medical Peace Campaign, 326
Mental defectives, 302
Prison reform, 262
Security program extension, 114
Wage earners, 300
Epidemics, New York City hospitals in,
87
Ernst, C. F., "We demand — ," 35
Ernst, Morris, 9, 48
Estates, 355
Everett, R. II., on "The Social Front,"
81
Experts, sanity and, 289
Facts, plain facts, 106
Farm youth, 197
Farmers, rehabilitation, 349
Relief and, 348
Farrand, Livingston, 340
Farrar's Recollections of Richard
Dewey, 62
Fayette County, Pa., Ill
Feder, Leah, 296
Feder's Unemployment Relief, 61
FERA, 307, 346, 348
Monthly reports of activities, 114
Federal Home Loan Bank Board, 383
Fediaevsky's Nursery School and Parent
Education in Soviet Russia, 91
Feel, use of the wore), 329
Feldman's Problems in Labor Hclntinns,
368
Fellowships, 298, 360
Psychiatry, 391
Fieser, J. L., 73
Figgis, John, 282
Filene, E. A., 15
Obituary, 318
Finance, 90
Family, 92
Fishbein's Syphilis, 335
Fleischner, H. E. (letter), 330
Flemming, C. C., 80
1-lexner's Doctors on Horseback, 396
Flint, Mich., relief in the sit-down
strike, 69
Floods, 47, 49
Mopping up the floods, 250
Unfinished business (cartoon), 46
Florida, 355
Adult education in place of a ship
canal, 350
Dental health, 86
Merit system, 383
State Board of Social Welfare, new,
228
Foester's The American State Uni-
versity, 122
Folks, Homer, 297
Food, 171
Chopped meat, 160
Food and drugs, 47
Ford Motor Co., 382
Foreign notes, 26
Fortune (magazine), unemployment
survey, 318
Foundations, 359
France, social work, 314
Frank, Glenn, 14
Frankfort, Ky., flood, 74
Freud's The Problem of Anxiety, 238
Friedsam Foundation, 117
Friendly visiting, 311
Galdston's Maternal Deaths, 398
Galdston's Medicine and Mankind, 62
Gardner, M. L. (letter), 59
Garrison, Lloyd, Constitutional amend-
ment suggested, 9
Gartland's Psychiatric Social Service
in a Children's Hospital, 397
Gary, Ind., 116
Gates of Mercy, 284
General Motors, sit-down strike, 47
United Automobile Workers and, 79
Geneva, labor delegates, 196
Georgia, compensation, 321
County directors, 258
Crime, 388
Old age assistance, 324
Gibbs, D. A., 105
Gifts, 359
Gilbert's Life Insurance, 170
Gill, Corrington, 256, 321
Gilliam, Lena, letter to Mr. Millionaire,
287
Girl Scouts, 88
Program study from outside, 251
Girls, camps for, 21
Giving, gullible people. 284
On giving $1,000,000 away. 147
Glassberg, Benjamin. A relief agency
plays the market. 282
Goldfeld's Housing Management, 207
Goldie and Gracie step out, 44
Goodrich, Charles. 340
Goodrich, H. L.. 10
Goulder, S. M. (letter). 90
Government, institute for government
service, 254
Stork-Derby problem (cartoon), 66
Gover'ment layette, 203
Government Statistics, 365
Grading law, 259
Graham, H. H., death, 361
Grand, F. W. stores 11 2
Gray, H. A. (letter), 395
Graymar's The School at the Crossroad
237
Greyhound Lines, 355
Griesemer, Douglas, Mopping up the
floods. 250
Griffin, Monsignor, 104
Group work, 189, 239
Case work and, 102, 138 •
Leaders, 333
Group workers, proposed organizatio]
11
Guggenheim, H. F., 192
Guild's Black Laws of Virginia, 171
(inlick, L. H., portrait in group, 45
Gulick's Mixing the Races in Hawai
398
Gulick and Urwick's Papers on the
Science of Administration, 399
Gullibility, 284
H
Haalke's Alli's Son, 239
Haber, William, 184, 185, 297, 321, 32
Habit, Force of, 77
Hall, J. F.. 311
Hamilton, Gordon, 72
Handicapped, School for 55
Handwriting, specimens, 109, 124
Hanmer, Lee, 265
Hanna's Youth Serves the Community
62
Hansa (ship), 325
Hardy and Hoefer's Healthy Growth,
123
Harlan County, Ky., 350
Harlem, 212
Relief, 82
Hart, J. K., 322
Hartford, Conn., 116. 326
Laymen's school, 19
Hartley, F. A., Jr., 260
Hartmann. G. W. (letter), 395
Harvard University, education of the
blind, 326
Public health degrees for women. 22
Hawaii, 398
Hay fever, 357
Hayden, Charles, foundation, 48
Head, Claude, 390
Healey's Foc's'le and Glory-Hale, 28
Health, 391
Education and, 123, 341
Inventory, 53
Michigan, 386
National Health Series, 236
Planning, 295
Proposed federal department, 225
Publications, 54
Studies and reports, 357
Health insurance, 186
Health Officer, The, 57
Health workers, 202
Heller, J. G.. 189, 190
Hendry, C. E., 7, 11, 376
Henry Street Settlement, 393
Heredity, 271
Herndon, Angelo, 153
Herrick, E. M., 387
High water high marks, 73
Hiffhschool, 158
Hill, T. A., 188
Hiller, Francis, 377
Hodson, William, 71, 183, 242, 284, 285
320
Hoehler F. K., Be it enacted . . ., 246
Hoey, Jane, 71
Hoffman Island, 294
Holidays, 332
Hollander, Sidney, 187. 188, 226
Holly, M. C., death, 120
Home economics, 297
Homeless men, New York City, 227
"Homes", assistance for the aged in,
157
Homework, 24
New York and New Tersey, 259
Honesty, 59
Honors, 57, 233. 264, 361, 393
Hooton, E. A., 241
Hopelessness of youth in Cleveland, S
Hopkins. H. L., 183, 290, 318
AASW and, 71-72
School of reducing (cartoons), 66
WPAand, 115
Hopkins, Mrs. H. L., death, 361
Hopkins' The Realities of Unemploy-
ment, 164
Horder, Lord. 326
Horney's The Neurotic Personality ol
Our Time, 269
Horse collars and prisons, 277
Hospitals, 87. 199, 357
Controversies in, 388
Mental disorders and the general
hospital, 87
Paying the hills. 87
Slides and films, 200
Tough facts about hospitals, 219
Hospites, 80, 90
Housekeeper service, 392
Housing, 23, 124, 193, 335, 340
' Conference in Philadelphia, 23
Country's need, 319
Influential groups favoring, 24
Junior Leagues and, 116
Limited dividend projects, 24
Management, 207
Morgenthau plan, 225
New bill, 80
New York law, 24
PWA and, 23
Self-help cooperative, 346
Shortage in prospect, 24
Wagner-Steagall bill, 225, 288
Washington, D. C., alleys, 286
Howe, Samuel Gridley, 314
Hoyt, F. C., death, 393
Hull-House, 264
Human nature, 4
Human security, 106
Human Security Week, 107
Husik, George, 282
Illegible signatures, 109, 124
Illegitimate children, 248
Illig, M. B., 260
Illinois, Adamowski bill, 263
Bank pensions, 324
Basic health needs, 231
Counseling service, 85
Nursing, 159
Old age assistance, 324
Parole, 83
Relief; supplementation, 320
State Conference, 161
Troubles, 291
Ward-Snackenburg bill, 262
Illiteracy, 197
Illustrations, 313
Indian Service, summer institutes, 233
Indiana, in-servire training, 386
Indianapolis, 118
Cancer clinic, 390
National Conference, 154, 179
Roberts School for Handicapped
Children, 55
Indians, 51
Industrial peace, 323
Industrial relations, 184
Industry, cooperation with government,
15
Publications, 25
Skilled labor shortage, 24
Infant mortality, 325
Negroes, 386
Infantile paralysis, 325
Inferiority, 270
Institutions, assistance for persons in,
157
Insurances, 51, 83, 114, 155, 195, 292
Administration, 292
Border line cases, 84
Company plans, 52
Private plans, 293
Interpretation, 56, 200
lona, Idaho, housing, 346
Iowa, compensation, 321
Irwin, R. W., death, 393
Isaacs' The Nursery Years, 207
Jacksonville, Fla,, survey of delinquents,
344
Jacoby's Physician, Pastor and Patient,
166
James. Darwin, R., death, 298
James's American Planning and Civic
Annual, 30
Jewish federations, 22
Jewish Welfare Board, 360
Jews, 351
Tobless, health, 54
jobs, 124, 322
New, 25, 58, 88, 120, 202, 234, 298,
360
Workers and, 54. 112
Johnson, Alvin, 361
In this real world of ours, 211
Johnson, Arlien, 185
Johnson, Mordecai, 182
Johnson, W. F., A new day for a juven-
ile court, 377
Tohnston's Prison Life Is Different, 165
Tohnstcne, Alan, 320, 354
Tolly, Robert, 104
Junior Leagues, 56, 116, 230, 392
Justice, Federal Department, 122
Juvenile court judges, organization, 232
Juvenile Courts, 90
Decrease in cases, 388
New day for a, 377
Shortcomings, 40
Juvenile institutions, 262
Kahn, Dorothy, 72
"This business of relief," 38
Kahn's Unemployment, etc., 164
Kansas, Child labor amendment, 355
CCC, 258
Pension plans, 384
' People of, 336
Kansas City, crime convention, 319
Kellogg, Paul, 178, 186, 233
Portrait, 178
Kentucky, child labor amendment, 50,
355
Coal mine companies, 350
Maternal Health League, 287
Prison system, 277
State Reformatory and the flood, 74
Kern County, Cal., work program, 37
Kilpatrick's The Teacher and Society,
268
Kindergarten anniversary, 293
King, Clarence, Social agency boards
and how to serve on them, 378
Why and wherefore, 342
Kingsbury, J. A., 186, 226
Kinsella, Nina, 190
Kleeck, Mary van, 241
"Known all over town," 78
Kurtz, R. H., Back to Indianapolis, 154
Labor. 188, 302. 355
Battle lines of rival unions, 196
Case book, 368
Conferences, etc., 79, 80
Disputes, 196, 323
Hour and wage standards. 193
Legislation, 258. 387
Peace moves, 355
Record and report, J96. 324, 387
Settlement of disputes, 152
Labor relations act, 350
Analysis of cases under, 387
La Crosse County, Wis., relief cases
(diagram), 82
LaFarge's Interracial Justice, 207
LaGuardia, F. H., 224, 226
Lambert, Clara, Looking back at the
long vacation, 279
Landis, H. D., 262
Lane, W. D., 190, 226
Lansdale, R. T., 395
These public welfare boards, 67
Laski, H. J., on experts, 343
Lauck, W. J., 9
Lauder, Estelle (letter), 203
Laughlin, H. B., Morals and mothers,
248
Lawyers Guild, National, 15
Laymen's school, 19
Leadership, business of, 375
Lectures, 85
Lee, Joseph, 255
Tribute to, 299
Lee, Porter R., 25, 328
Lee's Social Work as Cause and Func-
tion, 268
Legislation, labor, 258
Social workers and, 56
State, 246
State crime bills, 262
Lenroot, K. F., 188
Leonard Wood Memorial, 295
Leprosy, 295
Lerrigo, R. A., Gains and hopes for
health, 339
Social Workers report and forecast, 71
Letters, 27, 59, 90, 203, 235, 267, 299,
330, 362, 395
Levin, H. N. 285
Levy's Studies in Sibling Rivalry, 304
Lewis, J. L., 79
Libraries, 20
Flood damage, 116
Information on public affairs, 116
Social work headings, 232
State agencies, 20
State aid, 20
Trends, 332
Liens, 355
Life Adjustment Bureau, 354
Life insurance, 170
Lin's A History of the Press and Pub-
lic Opinion in China, 166
Lindeman, E. C., 190
Linden, N. J., 296
Linderholm, N. W., The reports I've
seen, 312
Littauer, L. N., benefactions, 359
Little 'dobe homes in the West, 37
Lloyd, George, mural, 17
Lobbying, 269
London, County Council report, 112
Social work, 327
Lorge, Irving, Farmers on relief, 348
Los Angeles, guidance clinic, 55
Junior League, 56
Los Angeles County, indigents, 290
Louisiana, WPA in, 115
Louisville, flood, 73
Louttit's Clinical Psychology, 206
Lowenstein, Solomon, 178, 186, 188
Portrait, 178. 190
Luccock's Christianity and the Indi-
vidual, 122
Luck isn't enough, 144
Lumpkin and Douglas' Child Workers in
America, 363
Lund, H. H., Patterns and Portents in
Index
the field of the private agency, 133
Lynching, 289
Gavagan bill, 152
Stop Lynching button, 193
Lynds' Middletown in Transition, 204
M
McChristie, M. E., 187
McConn's Planning for College, 364
McCord, Elizabeth, 328
McCormack, A. T., 338 (with portrait),
340
McCormick, H. P., death, 89
MacDonald, Byrnes, 327
McGrady, E. F., 327
Mclntosh, Earl (letter), 27
Maclver's Society, 237
McKelvey's American Prisons, 121
McLean, Francis, 344
McMillen, Wayne, Education for social
practice, 139
McNamee, C. D., Boarding out delin-
quent children, 217
MacNeil, D. H., Relief in New Jersey,
1936-1937, 99
McNutt, P. V., 18, 19
Maine, sales tax, 324
Manahan, H. M., "For the good of the
cause," 221
Mangus, A. k., 348
Markey, S. B. (letter), 90
Marriage, brokers, 48
Course of study in, 193
Martin, Homer, 382
Marvin, C. H., 104
Marvin's Comte, 171
Mason, L. R., 392
Massachusetts, 157 257
Birth control, 294, 350
Compensation, 321
Criminal responsibility, 289
Pneumonia, 358
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
military drill, 84
Maternal care, 386
Maternal health, safe period, 160
Maternal mortality, 398
Maternity, care in childbirth, 198
Matthews, W. H., On giving $1,000,000
away, 147
May Day, 119
Mayors, relief and, 384
Meatpacking, 388
Medical care, 200, 301, 339
Economic status and, 55
Public, report, 371
Medical men, 361
Medical notes, personal, 233
Medical profession, AMA looking glass,
295
Medical relief, New York City, 231
Medicine, 166, 364
Socialized, 383
Meetings, 26, 58, 85, 88, 162
Memorials, 264
Menefee, S. C., Standard of living, 281
Mennonite Board of Missions, 17
Mental defectives, 302
Mental disease, 357
Mental hygiene, 295, 310
Mental illness, 363
Mental power, 30
Meriam, Lewis, 184
Merit system, Florida, 383
Government administration, 224
Mist* Harry meets a merit system, 222
Merriam, C. E., portrait in group, 45
Mexican migrants, 82
Mexicans, 143
Mexico, temperance, 326
Michigan, 327
Child health, 386
Library service, 116
Public welfare, 19, 385
Welfare legislation, 247
Middletown, 204
Midmonthly Survey, Anniversary
project, 148
Endorsements, with facsimile auto-
graphs, 150
Migrant workers, 288
Migratory-casual workers (with map),
227
Milbank Memorial Fund, publications,
232
Military training, compulsory. 84
Milk supply, safeguarding, 391
Miller, Tustin, 327
Miller, Neville, 182
Million dollars plan, 287
Millis' Sickness and Insurance, 165
Milwaukee, committee on industrial dis-
putes, 323
Junior League, 56, 392
Milwaukee County, relief and the stock
market, 282
Milwaukee County Medical Society, 87
Miners, Quakers and, 111
Minimum wage, 24, 54, 259, 323
Constitutional amendment, 25
New York State, 153, 259
Public contracts act, 387
State laws (maps), 387
States and, 387
Washington law sustained, 110
Minneapolis, recreation for unemployed
men, 230
Minnesota, 156. 259
Conference, 56
Cooperatives, 52
Old age assistance, 324
State Conference, 161
Miss Bailey Says, 3, 42, 75, 106, 144,
222, 223, 316, 318
Miss Bailey's brief case, 3
Mississippi, 355
Lynching, 152
Missouri, dependent children, 354
Legislators, _ 200
Old age assistance, 81
Welfare legislation, 247
Montana, 157
Moonshiners, 142
Morals, mothers and. 248
Moreland, A. E., Aunt Minnie's new
house. 286
Morris. H. L., Ill
Moskowitz, Henry, death, 26
Mothers, morals and, 248
Mothers' milk, 198
Mothers of Britain. 297
Mowrer, O. H., 326
Murphy, Frank, 181, 183
On industrial relations, 184
Murphy, G. M.-P.. death, 351
Murray, Sir Hubert, 80
Musico-therapy, 29
Muskegon County, Mich., Couzens'
Committee, 217
Mustard's Rural Health Practice, 92
Myers, H. B., 227
Myers, James, 191
Meyerson's Eugenical Sterilization, 124
N
National Association of Manufacturers,
15
National Conference of Social Work, 20
Attendance figures, 391
Attractions at Indianapolis, 154
Character, 179
Indianapolis, proceedings, 179
Keynote, 180
Proceedings, publication, 396
Program framework, 118
Rank-and-file group, 179
Registration, meetings, officers, 186
Youth movement, 180
National Organization for Public Health
Nursing, 120
National unemployment and relief
commission, 114
NYA, sidelight on, 252
Student aid, 85
Natural resources, utilization, 318
Nebraska, citizen service, 19
One-house legislature, 48
School of social work, 297
Negroes, 171, 182, 188, 197, 207, 367
Atlanta survey, 117
Bronze Booklets, 270
Infant mortality, 386
Special problems, 7
Tuberculosis, 358
Neifeld's Cooperative Consumer Credit,
etc., 204
Neuroses, 269
Nevada, 157
New Britain, Conn., relief. 157
New England, conscience, 330
Medical center for rural physicians,
325
New Hampshire, relief bill, 228
New Haven, Conn., 330
Population studies, 92
Restaurants, 391
New Jersey, Monmouth County, 267
Rel'ief, 157, 320
Relief in 1936-1937, 99
New Mexico, 1"59
Relief, 244
New School for Social Research, 197
New York (city), charity racketeering.
284
Chronic illness, cost, 86
Citizens' Committee on the Control of
Crime, 192
Directory of Social Agencies, 365
ERB and rents, 290
ERB merging, 227
ERB pay, 358
Homeless men, 227
Hospital for chronic diseases, 260
Hospital Survey, 219
Hospitals in epidemics, 87
Medical relief; health centers, 231
Memorial Hospital for cancer, etc.,
260
Milk and restaurants, 391
Nurses, 159, 289, 358
Nurses, eight-hour day, 263
Public assistance, 320
Readers in schools, 158
Reinvestigation of ERB. 114
Sanitation police, 87
School children, 158
INDEX
VOLUME LXXIII
JANUARY 1937 — DECEMBER 1937
NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
112 EAST 19TH STREET
Index
VOLUME LXXIII
January 1937 — December 1937
The material in this index is arranged under authors and subjects and
in a few cases under titles. Anonymous articles and paragraphs are
entered under their subject. The precise wording of titles has not been
retained where abbreviation or paraphrase has seemed more desirable.
Abbott. Edith, 181, 182, 191, 208, 361
On public assistance, 181
Portrait, 155, 190
Abbott's The Tenements of Chicago, 60
Accounting, uniform system, 296
Adams, Bess (letter), 395
Adamson's So You're Going to a
Psychiatrist, 122
Additon, Henrietta, 162
Adkins case. 110
Administration. 185, 186, 399
Administrative Management Committee
(portraits), 45
Adoption of children, 362
Standards, 386
Adult education, 158, 197
University of Florida, 350
WPA's project, 353
Air stewardesses, 53
Airports and airplanes
Health measures, 160
Alabama, 395
Burglary, 48
Child welfare problem in, 81
Alexander, Franz, 190
Alexander, P. \V., 377
Alexander's The Medical Value of
Psychoanalysis, 30
Aliens, children of unemployed, 350
Relief and, 321
Allegheny County, 159
Allen, Eleanor, Employment service —
new style, 216
Allen, F. E., portrait, 189
Alleys, Washington, D. C., 19
Altmeyer, A. J., 187
Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 80
American Association of Social
Workers, 201
Convention in Washington, 71
Membership, 232
New members, 85
Unemployment protection 297
AF of L, CIO and, 355
American Friends Service Committee,
111
American Medical Association, 225,
372
American Public Health Association,
annual meeting. 339
American Public Welfare Association,
3, 18, 19
Americana, 305
Amidon, Beulah, Shall we amend?, 8
Amoskeag Mfg. Co.. 321
Anderson, Nels, 188
Anderson's Children in the Family. 239
Andersons reform, 77
Anxiety, 238
Appointments, 233, 234
Aptitudes, 240
Arizona. 51, 257
Relief, 243, 244
Stanford, Governor, 351
Arkansas, 355
Civil service law, 227
Libraries. 116
Relief, 243, 244
Aronovici and McCalmont's Catching
Up With Housing, 124
Art, 12
Asch. Berta, 348
ASGW, 11
AICP, 56, 386
Atlanta, Negro boys, 1 1 7
Atwater, Pierce. 185
Auburn plan, 277
Austin, Tex., 56
Authority and the Individual, 238
Automobile industry, union clinic, 323
Automobile workers. 196
Automobiles, deaths in accidents, 230
B
Babies, 60
Bacteriology course, 161
Bailey, Miss, 3, 42, 43, 75, 106, 144,
222, 316
Baker, George F.. 359
Baker, H. C., 200
Social workers grope for unity, 179
Baker, Jacob, 255
Baker, Newton D., 90
A clean slate for a fresh start, 7
Baker and Traphagen's The Diagnosis
and Treatment of Behavior-Problem
Children. 239
Ball Foundation. 160
Ballard's Social Institutions, 169
Baltimore, personnel study, 85
Relief, 157
Relief purges, 354
Social Security Board, labor trouble,
389
Bancroft, F. C., 264
Bane, Frank, 291
Banks, pensions, 324
Bar associations, 15
Barker's Live Long and Be Happy, 30
Bassett's Zoning, 238
Batchelor, C. D., 262
Bates, Sanford, 160, 190
Leadership, the business of, 375
Portrait and note, 57
Bate's Prisons and Beyond, 91
Bauer's Health Education of the Public,
399
Baum, W. M., Social work at the Paris
Exposition, 314
Beauty, drive to create, 12
Behavior, 239
Factors Determining Human
Behavior, 205
Behavior as it is behaved, 12, 44, 77,
108, 146
Behaviorism, 270
Bennett, J. V., Horse collars and
prisons, 277
Bentley's Problem Children, 30
Bentley's Superior Children, 270
Berry, G. L., 15
Between Spires and Stacks, 7
Biddle, George, murals (ills.), 98
Big Brother and Big Sister Federation,
83
Bigelow's Family Finance, 92
Biggers, J. D., 322
Bingham, William, 2nd, 325
Bingham's Aptitudes and Aptitude
Testing, 240
Birth control, 48, 294
Bootleg devices. 295
Clinics, 39. 294
Massachusetts, 350
Million dollars for, 287
Puerto Rico, 199
Births, perilous. 386
Black-Connery bill, 193
Blacker's A Social Problem Group?,
302
Blind, the, 27, 328
Employment service for, 85
WPA projects for, 353
Blough. Roy. 185
Board Member's Manual, 399
Boarding out delinquent children, 217
Boards, comments on, 67
Policy decisions, 343
Social agency boards and how to serve
on them, 342. 378
Bogert and Porter's Dietetics Simplified,
171
Bogoslovsky's The Ideal School, 60
Bookman, C. M., 73
Books
Reviews, 28. 60, 91, 121, 164, 204,
236, 268, 300, 331, 363, 396
Short reviews, 64, 208, 272, 399
Borst, H. W. (letter), 330
Boston, birth control, 350
Nurses, 158
Relief, 82
Social service exchange as subject for
mural (ill.), 17
Training for boys on probation. 83
Boudreau, F. G., 87
Bouquet Department, 235
Bowers, G. A., 389
Boy Scouts, 88, 202
Boys Clubs, 88
Boys' Clubs of America, 57, 375
Boys' eye view of life, 7
Brace up, Theodore, 316
Brackenbury's Patient and Doctor, 91
Braden, Norman. 74
Bradley, R. M., Joseph Lee (letter), 299
Brawley's Negro Builders and Heroes,
367
Breckenridge, S. P., 188
Breen's Partners in Play, 93
Brevis, H. J. (letter), 27
Bridgman, Laura, 315
Britain, mothers of, 297
Security, surplus fund, 293
Britten, R. H., 340
Bromberg's The Mind of Man, 363
Bronner's New Light on Delinquency,
62
Bronze Booklets, 270
Brooklyn, N. Y., Bureau of Charities,
392
Survey of facilities and needs, 56
Brookwood Labor College, 389
Brown, Mr. and Mrs. George Warren,
13
Brown, Harvey I)., death, 298
Brown, Josephine C., 186, 298
Brown Memorial Building, St. Louis
(with ill.). 13
Brownlow, Louis, portrait in group, 45
Brownrigg, W. E., 327
Browns, two Miss, 89
Brown's Mind, Medicine, and Meta-
physics, 121
Bryan's Adminstrative Psychiatry, 64
Buffalo, N. Y.. Planning research, 358
Bundy, S. E., A sidelight on the
N.Y.A., 252
Burns, A. T., 104
Burr, C. W.. Little 'dobe homes in the
West, 37
Burrow's Human Conflict, 331
Business men, 318
Butler. Amos W.. death, 298
Butler's Playgrounds, 29
Byrnes committee, 224
Cabot's Christianity and Sex, 396
Cahn and Bary's Welfare Activities . . .
in California, 1850-1934, 62
California, cotton camps, 231
Old age assistance, 324
Public welfare, 19
Relief, 244, 245
SRA, 354
Social workers, 85
Transiency, 307, 398
Cameron, M. T. (letter), 395
Campbell, H. G., 158
Camps, 161
Girls', 21
Canada, Medical services, 200
Cancer, 118, 260, 390
Memorial Hospital, 260
National Institute, 260
New York State commission, 327
Research, 260
Women's Field Army, for control, 14,
260
Cancer Institute, 361
Cannibals, 80
Carnegie Institute of Technology, 160
Former students, 233
Carr, Charlotte, 50, 264
Carr, Saunders, Professor, 234
Carter, A. B., 187
Cartoons (ills.), 210
Case work, 238, 271, 299
Case work and group work, 102, 138
In administration of relief, 38
Catholic Charities, 361
Character, lack in Cleveland boys and
girls, 7
Charity, racketeering, 284
Charity Church of Christ, 284
Chenoweth and Selkirk's School Health
Problems, 269
Chests and Councils, 163
Chicago. Council and social legislation,
232
Jewish Children's Bureau (League),
294
Mergers, 232
Recreational directory, 230
Relief, 18
Relief Administration, 226
Relief chiselers, 382
Relief strikers, 385
Social Service Year Book. 392
Social work Publicity Council, 119_
Social workers' salaries and quali-
fications, 232
Taverns, 83
Teaching by radio, 322
Tenements, 60
Unemployables, 373
Year Book, 86
Chickering, M. A., States look at public
welfare, 135
Child Health Day, 119
Child labor, 50, 110, 363
Kentucky, 355
Murals by Biddle illustrating, 98
North and South Carolina, 258
Proposed legislation, 225
Sugar Act and, 322
Child labor amendment, 48, 110, 153
Fight to ratify, 79
New York and other legislatures, 112
Child marriages, 293
Child neurology, 117
Child Study Association, 279
Child welfare, 55, 116, 198
Alabama, 81
Publications, 55
Child Welfare League, health advice,
116
Children, 207, 293
Adopting, 362, 386
Assistance to, 75
Children aren't trash. 75
Constitutional amendment in the
interest of, 110
Crippled, 294
Deaf -blind, 315
Deafness, 327
Dependent, assistance for, 354
Detroit, student training for, 386
Gifted, 270, 319
Hostility patterns in, 304
Needy, 198
Of aliens, 350
Problems, 30
Publications, 198
Summer outings, 294
Yale course on, 326
Children's Bureau, 157
New committee, 117
Salute to (dinner at 25th anni-
versary), 101
Childs, S. W.. 260
Childs Memorial Fund, 260
China, 166
Birth control, 294
IV
War children, 383
Christensen, Viggo, 359
Christmas seal campaign, 359
Red Cross and, 326
Chronic diseases, New York hospital
for, 260
Chronic illness, cost in New York City,
86
Chronic patients project, 199
Church Conference of Social Work, 191
Churches, social agencies and, 359
Chute, C. L., These juvenile courts of
ours, 40
Cincinnati, flood, 73
Cities, public health, 22
Citizen boards of public welfare. 258
Citizen service, 19, 56, 230, 296
Publication, 20
Citizenship, college training for, 21
Civil service, 224, 267
State action, 227, 351
CCC, 158, 271
Here to stay?, 18
Kansas, 258
Legislation, 320
Tuberculosis in, 261
Camp, wedding, 15
Clague, Ewan, 187
Social work and social security, 5
Clapp, R. C., 7
Clark, C. E., 9
Clark and Roberts' People of Kansas,
336
Clergy, personals, 265
Cleveland, 90, 296
Children, 198
Relief chiselers, 382
Welfare Federation survey, 7
Clevenger, Louise, 187, 392
Close, Kathryn (letter), 235
Charity racketeering 284
Clover, G. F., death, 265
Coal industry, 80
Kentucky, 350
Colcord, J. C., 90
(letter), 183
West, the, is still different, 243
Cole's Character and Christian Educa-
tion, 122
Cole and Crowe's Recent Trends in
Rural Planning, 364
Coler, B. S., 285
College graduates, placements, 193
Colleges, 57, 264, 364
Faculties, 327
Training for citizenship, 21
Collins, Marietta, death, 328
Colorado old age assistance, 292, 355
Pensions, 51
Public assistance, 291
Relief and pensions, 320
Columbia University, 105
Graduate placements, 193
CIO, AF of L and, 355
Commodities, surplus, 385
Common welfare, 14, 47, 79, 110, 152,
192, 224, 254, 288, 318, 350, 382
Notes 289, 319
Commonwealth Fund, 160
Community chest campaigns, 21, 232
Community chests and councils, changes,
328
Community Chests and Councils, Inc.,
22, 326
Community organization, 190
Community planning, 191
Compensation. See Unemployment
compensation
Comte, Auguste, 171
Conant. R. K., 185, 360
Congress, 351
Wages and hours bill, 387
Connecticut, pauper laws and legal
settlements, 113
Constitution, amendments, types under
discussion, 8
Consumers, 259, 318
Consumers' National Federation, 202
Contraceptive clinic, 39
Convicts, 193
Cooperative Alliance, Congress, 52
Cooperative Institute, 259
Cooperatives, 52
Management school, 52
Publications, 52
Self-help, 346
Copeland, Senator, 47, 48
Corn, E. W. (letter), 59
Corwin, R. G., 191
Cotton, 363
Cotton textile industry, 259
Council for Industrial Progress, 15
Counseling service, 85
Couzens' Committee, 217
Cowgill, E. L,, 69
Coyle, G. L., Case work and group
work, 102, 138
Coyle's Studies in Group Behavior, 239
Credit unions, 204
Crime, 190, 261, 268, 388
Committee on Control, New York
City, 192
Georgia, 388
Interstate Commission on, 319
Index
Kinds and location, 261
Responsibility question, 289
Crime prevention, 83
New proposals, 83
Release procedures, study, 83
Crime Prevention Institute, 83
Crippled children, 294
Cross's Newcomers and Nomads in
California, 398
Cummings and McFarland's Federal
Tustice, 122
Cushman, R. E., 9
Czechoslovakia, 293
D
Daily News, The, 199
Dancing, 146
Davidson and Anderson's Occupational
Mobility in an American Commu-
nity, 303
Davis, Jerome, 14
Davis, M. M., Public medical care, 371
Tough facts about hospitals, 219
Davis' Public Medical Services, 301
Davis' They Shall Not Want, 164
Dayton, Ohio, rating of restaurants, 22
Deaf-blind children, 315
Deafness in children, 327
Deardorff, N. R., 27
Deeply felt (letter), 329
Deaths, 26, 58, 89, 120, 265, 298, 328,
361, 393
Deering, N. H., 119
Delinquency, 28, 62, 206
Boarding out delinquent children, 217
Course on, 326
Jacksonville, Fla., survey, 344
Deming, Dorothy, 341
Dental clinics, 86
Dental hygiene, 342
Dent's The Human Machine, 270
Denver, Associated Charities, 289
Birth survey, 261
Memorial, 201
Pension plans, 384
Relief, 82
Detroit, broken homes, 354
Franklin Street Settlement, 359
Social Clinics, 296
Student volunteers, 116
Training by practice, 386
Tuberculosis, 53
Devine, E. T., portrait, '153
Dewey, Richard, 62
Diabetes, 118
Dickson's Story of King Cotton, 363
Dictation, simplified formula for, 221
Diphtheria, 86
Disability, 168
Disaster loans, 115
Disease, 390
District of Columbia, 259, 389
Alley Dwelling Authority, 286
Doctors, 91,200,396
Dollard's Caste and Class in a Southern
Town, 331
Douglass' Secondary Education, 398
Dowd's Control in Human Societies, 32
Dowdell, M. P. (letter), 267
Drama, 12
Producing a play, 13
Draper, M. C, 392
Dreis' A Handbook of Social Statistics
of New Haven, Conn., 92
Drinkers, 363
Drugs, 47
Durfee's To Drink or Not to Drink, 363
Dykstra, C. A., 47
E
Easley, R. M., 254
Eastern Cooperative Wholesale, 260
Education, 84, 236, 237, 322, 389
American Education Week, 322
Building for social work education
(with ill.), 13
Federal aid, 21, 84
For social practice, 139
Health by, 123
Publications, 85, 389
Report and record, 21, 322
Youth and, 158
Education for Democracy (radio pro-
gram), 197
Education in the Family, 119
Educators, 268
Personal notes, 234
Ego urge, 146
Elections, 234, 361
Electric utilities, 32
FJiot, T. D. (letter), 90
Elliott, G. L., 189
ERB, 320
Employability, 321
Employers, delinquent, 389
Employment outlook, 5
Straws in the wind, 382
Employment service — new style, 216
Employment services, 229
England, Medical Peace Campaign, 326
Mental defectives, 302
Prison reform, 262
Security program extension, 114
Wage earners, 300
Epidemics, New York City hospitals in,
87
Ernst, C. F., "We demand — ," 35
Ernst, Morris, 9, 48
Estates, 355
Everett, K. H., on "The Social Fnmt,"
81
Experts, sanity and, 289
Facts, plain facts, 106
Farm youth, 197
Farmers, rehabilitation, 349
Relief and. 348
Farrand, Livingston, 340
Farrar's Recollections of Richard
Dewey, 62
Fayette County, Pa., Ill
Feder, Leah, 296
Feder's Unemployment Relief, 61
FERA, 307, 346, 348
Monthly reports of activities, 114
Federal Home Loan Bank Board, 383
Fediaevsky's Nursery School and Parent
Education in Soviet Russia, 91
Feel, use of the word, 329
Feldman's Problems in Labor Relations,
368
Fellowships, 298, 360
Psychiatry, 391
Fieser, J. L., 73
Figgis, John, 282
Filene, E. A., 15
Obituary, 318
Finance, 90
Family, 92
Fishbein's Syphilis, 335
Fleischner, H. E. (letter), 330
Flemming, C. C., 80
Mexner's Doctors on Horseback, 396
Flint, Mich., relief in the sit-down
strike, 69
Floods, 47, 49
Mopping up the floods, 250
Unfinished business (cartoon), 46
Florida, 355
Adult education in place of a ship
canal, 350
Dental health, 86
Merit system, 383
State Board of Social Welfare, new,
228
Foester's The American State Uni-
versity, 122
Folks, Homer, 297
Food, 171
Chopped meat, 160
Food and drugs, 47
Ford Motor Co., 382
Foreign notes, 26
Fortune (magazine), unemployment
survey, 318
Foundations, 359
France, social work, 314
Frank, Glenn, 14
Frankfort, Ky., flood, 74
Freud's The Problem of Anxiety, 238
Friedsam Foundation, 117
Friendly visiting, 311
Galdston's Maternal Deaths, 398
Galdston's Medicine and Mankind, 62
Gardner, M. L. (letter), 59
Garrison, Lloyd, Constitutional amend-
ment suggested, 9
Gartland's Psychiatric Social Service
in a Children's Hospital, 397
Gary, Ind., 116
Gates of Mercy, 284
General Motors, sit-down strike, 47
United Automobile Workers and, 79
Geneva, labor delegates, 196
Georgia, compensation, 321
County directors, 258
Crime, 388
Old age assistance, 324
Gibbs, D. A., 105
Gifts, 359
Gilbert's Life Insurance, 170
Gill, Corrington. 256, 321
Gilliam, Lena, letter to Mr. Millionaire,
287
Girl Scouts, 88
Program study from outside, 251
Girls, camps for, 21
Giving, gullible people, 284
On giving $1,000.000 away, 147
Glassberg, Benjamin, A relief agency
plays the market, 282
Goldfeld's Housing Management, 207
Goldie and Gracie step out, 44
Goodrich, Charles. 340
Goodrich, H. L., 10
Goulder, S. M. (letter). 90
Government, institute for government
service, 254
Stork-Derby problem (cartoon), 66
Gover'ment layette, 203
Government Statistics. 365
Grading law, 259
Graham, H. H., death, 361
Grand, F. W. stores 112
Gray, H. A. (letter), 395
Graymar's The School at the Crossroads,
237
Greyhound Lines, 355
Griesemer, Douglas, Mopping up the
floods. 250
Griffin, Monsignor, 104
Group work, 189, 239
Case work and, 102, 138 •
Leaders, 333
Group workers, proposed organization,
11
Guggenheim, H. F., 192
Guild's Black Laws of Virginia, 171
Gulick, L. H., portrait in group, 45
Gulick's Mixing the Races in Hawaii,
398
Gulick and Urwick's Papers on the
Science of Administration, 399
Gullibility, 284
H
Haalke's Alli's Son, 239
Haber, William, 1S4, 185, 297, 321, 328
Habit, Force of, 77
Hall. J. F., 311
Hamilton, Gordon, 72
Handicapped, School for 55
Handwriting, specimens, 109, 124
Hanmer, T^ee, 265
Hanna's Youth Serves the Community,
62
Hansa (ship), 325
Hardy and Hoefer's Healthy Growth.
123
Harlan County, Ky., 350
Harlem, 212
Relief, 82
Hart, J. K., 322
Hartford, Conn., 116. 326
Laymen's school, 19
Hartley, F. A., Jr., 260
Hartmann, G. W. (letter). 395
Harvard University, education of the
blind. 326
Public health degrees for women, 22
Hawaii, 398
Hay fever, 357
Hayden, Charles, foundation, 48
Head, Claude, 390
Healey's Foc's'le and Glory-Hole, 28
Health, 391
Education and, 123, 341
Inventory, 53
Michigan, 386
National Health Series, 236
Planning, 295
Proposed federal department, 225
Publications, 54
Studies and reports, 357
Health insurance. 186
Health Officer, The, 57
Health workers, 202
Heller, J. G., 189, 190
Hendry, C. E., 7. 11, 376
Henry Street Settlement, 393
Heredity, 271
Herndon, Angelo, 153
Herrick, E. M., 387
High water high marks, 73
Hitrh school, 158
Hill. T. A., 188
Hiller, Francis, 377
Hodson. William, 71, 183, 242, 284, 285,
320
Hoehler F. K.. Be it enacted . . ., 246
Hoey, Jane, 71
Hoffman Island, 294
Holidays, 332
Hollander, Sidney, 187. 188, 226
Holly, M. C.. death, 120
Home economics, 297
Homeless men, New York City, 227
"Homes", assistance for the aged in,
157
Homework, 24
New York and New Jersey, 259
Honesty, 59
Honors, 57, 233. 264, 361, 393
Hooton, E. A., 241
Hopelessness of youth in Cleveland, S
Hopkins. H. L., 183, 290, 318
AASW and, 71-72
School of reducing (cartoons), 66
WPAand, 115
Hopkins. Mrs. H. L.. death, 361
Hopkins' The Realities of Unemploy-
ment, 164
Horder, Lord. 326
Horney's The Neurotic Personality of
Our Time, 269
Horse collars and prisons, 277
Hospitals, 87, 199, 357
Controversies in, 388
Mental disorders and the general
hospital. 87
Paying the bills, 87
Slides and films, 200
Tough facts about hospitals. 219
Hospites, 80, 90
Housekeeper service, 392
Housing, 23, 124, 193, 335, 340
Conference in Philadelphia, 23
Country's need, 319
Influential groups favoring, 24
Junior Leagues and, 116
Limited dividend projects, 24
Management, 207
Morgenthau plan, 225
New bill, 80
New York law, 24
PWA and, 23
Self-help cooperative, 346
Shortage in prospect, 24
Wagner- Steagall bill, 225, 288
Washington, D. C., alleys, 286
Howe, Samuel Gridley, 314
Hoyt, F. C, death, 393
Hull-House, 264
Human nature, 4
Human security, 106
Human Security Week, 107
Husik, George, 282
Illegible signatures, 109, 124
Illegitimate children, 248
Illig, M. B., 260
Illinois, Adamowski bill, 263
Bank pensions, 324
Basic health needs, 231
Counseling service, 85
Nursing, 159
Old age assistance, 324
Parole, 83
Relief; supplementation, 320
State Conference, 161
Troubles, 291
Ward-Snackenburg bill, 262
Illiteracy, 197
Illustrations, 313
Indian Service, summer institutes, 233
Indiana, in-service training, 386
Indianapolis, 118
Cancer clinic, 390
National Conference, 154, 179
Roberts School for Handicapped
Children, 55
Indians, 51
Industrial peace, 323
Industrial relations, 184
Industry, cooperation with government,
15
Publications, 25
Skilled labor shortage, 24
Infant mortality, 325
Negroes, 386
Infantile paralysis, 325
Inferiority, 270
Institutions, assistance for persons in,
157
Insurances, 51, 83, 114, 155, 195, 292
Administration, 292
Border line cases, 84
Company plans, 52
Private plans, 293
Interpretation, 56, 200
lona, Idaho, housing, 346
Iowa, compensation, 321
Irwin, R. W., death, 393
Isaacs' The Nursery Years, 207
Jacksonville, Fla., survey of delinquents,
344
Jacoby's Physician, Pastor and Patient,
166
James, Darwin, R., death, 298
James's American Planning and Civic
Annual, 30
Jewish federations, 22
Jewish Welfare Board, 360
Tews, 351
Jobless, health, 54
jobs, 124, 322
New, 25, 58, 88, 120, 202, 234, 298,
360
Workers and, 54, 112
Johnson, Alvin, 361
In this real world of ours, 211
Johnson, Arlien, 185
Johnson, Mordecai, 182
Johnson, W. F., A new day for a juven-
ile court, 377
Johnston's Prison Life Is Different, 165
Johnstcne, Alan, 320, 354
Jolly, Robert, 104
Junior Leagues, 56, 116, 230, 392
Justice, Federal Department, 122
Juvenile court judges, organization, 232
Juvenile Courts, 90
Decrease in cases, 388
New day for a, 377
Shortcomings, 40
Juvenile institutions, 262
Kahn, Dorothy, 72
_"This business of relief," 38
Kahn's Unemployment, etc., 164
Kansas, Child labor amendment, 355
CCC, 258
Pension plans, 384
People of, 336
Kansas City, crime convention, 319
Kellogg, Paul, 178, 186, 233
Portrait, 178
Kentucky, child labor amendment, 50,
355
Coal mine companies, 350
Maternal Health League, 287
Prison system, 277
State Reformatory and the flood, 74
Kern County, Cal., work program, 37
Kilpatrick's The Teacher and Society,
268
Kindergarten anniversary, 293
King, Clarence, Social agency boards
and how to serve on them, 378
Why and wherefore, 342
Kingsbury, J. A., 186, 226
Kinsella, Nina, 190
Kleeck, Mary van, 241
"Known all over town," 78
Kurtz, R. H., Back to Indianapolis, 154
Labor, 188, 302, 355
Battle lines of rival unions, 196
Case book, 368
Conferences, etc., 79, 80
Disputes, 196, 323
Hour and wage standards, 193
Legislation, 258, 337
Peace moves, 355
Record and report, 196. 324, 387
Settlement of disputes, 152
Labor relations act, 350
Analysis of cases under, 387
La Crosse County, Wis., relief cases
(diagram), 82
LaFarge's Interracial Justice, 207
LaGuardia, F. H., 224. 226
Lambert, Clara, Looking back at the
long vacation, 279
Landis, H. D., 262
Lane, W. D., 190, 226
Lansdale, R. T., 395
These public welfare boards, 67
Laski, H. J., on experts, 343
Lauck, W. J., 9
Lauder, Estelle (letter), 203
Laughlin, H. B., Morals and mothers,
248
Lawyers Guild, National, 15
Laymen's school, 19
Leadership, business of, 375
Lectures, 85
Lee, Joseph, 255
Tribute to, 299
Lee, Porter R., 25, 328
Lee's Social Work as Cause and Func-
tion, 268
Legislation, labor, 258
Social workers and, 56
State, 246
State crime bills, 262
Lenroot, K. F., 188
Leonard Wood Memorial, 295
Leprosy, 295
Lerrigo, R. A., Gains and hopes for
health, 339
Social Workers report and forecast, 71
Letters, 27, 59, 90, 203, 235, 267, 299,
330, 362, 395
Levin, H. N. 285
Levy's Studies in Sibling Rivalry, 304
Lewis, J. L., 79
Libraries, 20
Flood damage, 116
Information on public affairs, 116
Social work headings, 232
State agencies, 20
State aid, 20
Trends, 332
Liens, 355
Life Adjustment Bureau, 354
Life insurance, 170
Lin's A History of the Press and Pub-
lic Opinion in China, 166
Lindeman, E. C., 190
Linden, N. J., 296
Linderholm, N. W., The reports I've
seen, 312
Littauer, L. N., benefactions, 359
Little 'dobe homes in the West, 37
Lloyd, George, mural, 17
Lobbying, 269
London, County Council report, 112
Social work, 327
Lorge, Irving, Farmers on relief, 348
Los Angeles, guidance clinic, 55
Junior League, 56
Los Angeles County, indigents, 290
Louisiana, WPA in, 115
Louisville, flood, 73
Louttit's Clinical Psychology, 206
Lowenstein, Solomon, 178, 186, 188
Portrait, 178. 190
Luccock's Christianity and the Indi-
vidual, 122
Luck isn't enough, 144
Lumpkin and Douglas' Child Workers in
America, 363
Lund, H. H., Patterns and Portents in
Index
the field of the private agency, 133
Lynching, 289
Gavagan bill, 152
Stop Lynching button, 193
Lynds' Middletown in Transition, 204
M
McChristie, M. E.. 187
McConn's Planning for College, 364
McCord, Elizabeth, 328
McCormack, A. T., 338 (with portrait),
340
McCormick, H. P., death, 89
MacDonald, Byrnes, 327
McGrady, E. F., 327
Mclntosh, Earl (letter), 27
Maclver's Society, 237
McKelvey's American Prisons, 121
McLean, Francis, 344
McMillen, Wayne, Education for social
practice, 139
McNamee, C. D., Boarding out delin-
quent children, 217
MacNeil, D. H.. Relief in New Jersey,
1936-1937, 99
McNutt, P. V., 18, 19
Maine, sales tax, 324
Manahan. H. M., "For the good of the
cause," 221
Mangus, A. K., 348
Markey, S. B. (letter), 90
Marriage, brokers, 48
Course of study in, 193
Martin, Homer, 382
Marvin, C. H., 104
Marvin's Comte, 171
Mason, L. R., 392
Massachusetts, 137 257
Birth control, 294, 350
Compensation, 321
Criminal responsibility, 289
Pneumonia, 358
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
military drill, 84
Maternal care, 386
Maternal health, safe period, 160
Maternal mortality, 398
Maternity, care in childbirth, 198
Matthews, W. H., On giving $1,000,000
away, 147
May Day, 119
Mayors, relief and, 384
Meatpacking, 388
Medical care, 200, 301, 339
Economic status and, 55
Public, report, 371
Medical men, 361
Medical notes, personal, 233
Medical profession, A MA looking glass,
295
Medical relief, New York City, 231
Medicine, 166, 364
Socialized, 383
Meetings, 26, 58, 85, 88, 162
Memorials, 264
Menefee, S. C., Standard of living, 281
Mennonite Board of Missions, 17
Mental defectives, 302
Mental disease, 357
Mental hygiene, 295, 310
Mental illness, 363
Mental power, 30
Meriam, Lewis, 184
Merit system, Florida, 383
Government administration, 224
Mist* Harry meets a merit system, 222
Merriam, C. E., portrait in group, 45
Mexican migrants, 82
Mexicans, 143
Mexico, temperance, 326
Michigan, 327
Child health, 386
Library service, 116
Public welfare, 19. 385
Welfare legislation, 247
Middletown, 204
Midmonthly Survey, Anniversary
project, 148
Endorsements, with facsimile auto-
graphs, 150
Migrant workers, 288
Migratory-casual workers (with map),
227
Milbank Memorial Fund, publications,
232
Military training, compulsory. 84
Milk supply, safeguarding, 391
Miller, Tustin, 327
Miller, Neville, 182
Million dollars plan, 287
Millis' Sickness and Insurance, 165
Milwaukee, committee on industrial dis-
putes, 323
Junior League, 56, 392
Milwaukee County, relief and the stock
market, 282
Milwaukee County Medical Society, 87
Miners, Quakers and, 111
Minimum wage, 24, 54, 259, 323
Constitutional amendment, 25
New York State, 153, 259
Public contracts act, 387
State laws (maps), 387
States and, 387
Washington law sustained, 110
Minneapolis, recreation for unemployed
men, 230
Minnesota, 156. 259
Conference, 56
Cooperatives, 52
Old age assistance, 324
State Conference, 161
Miss Bailey Says, 3, 42, 75, 106, 144.
222, 223, 316, 318
Miss Bailey's brief case, 3
Mississippi, 355
Lynching, 152
Missouri, dependent children, 354
Legislators, 200
Old age assistance, 81
Welfare legislation, 247
Montana, 157
Moonshiners, 142
Morals, mothers and. 248
Moreland, A. E., Aunt Minnie's new
house, 286
Morris, H. L., Ill
Moskowitz, Henry, death, 26
Mothers, morals and, 248
Mothers' milk, 198
Mothers of Britain. 297
Mowrer, O. H., 326
Murphy, Frank, 181, 183
On industrial relations, 184
Murphy, G. M.-P., death, 351
Murray, Sir Hubert, 80
Musico-therapy, 29
Muskegon County, Mich., Couzens'
Committee, 217
Mustard's Rural Health Practice, 92
Myers, H. B., 227
Myers, James, 191
Meyerson's Eugenical Sterilization, 124
N
National Association of Manufacturers,
15
National Conference of Social Work, 20
Attendance figures, 391
Attractions at Indianapolis, 154
Character, 179
Indianapolis, proceedings, 179
Keynote, 180
Proceedings, publication, 396
Program framework, 118
Rank-and-file group, 179
Registration, meetings, officers, 186
Youth movement, 180
National Organization for Public Health
Nursing, 120
National unemployment and relief
commission, 114
NYA, sidelight on, 252
Student aid, 85
Natural resources, utilization, 318
Nebraska, citizen service, 19
One-house legislature, 48
School of social work, 297
Negroes, 171, 182, 188, 197, 207, 367
Atlanta survey, 117
Bronze Booklets, 270
Infant mortality, 386
Special problems, 7
Tuberculosis, 358
Neifeld's Cooperative Consumer Credit,
etc., 204
Neuroses, 269
Nevada, 157
New Britain, Conn., relief, 157
New England, conscience, 3.^0
Medical center for rural physicians,
325
New Hampshire, relief bill, 228
New Haven, Conn., 330
Population studies, 92
Restaurants, 391
New Jersey, Monmouth County, 267
Rel'ief, 157, 320
Relief in 1936-1937, 99
New Mexico, 1"59
Relief, 244
New School for Social Research, 197
New York (city), charity racketeering,
284
Chronic illness, cost, 86
Citizens' Committee on the Control of
Crime, 192
Directory of Social Agencies, 365
ERB and rents, 290
ERB merging, 227
ERB pay, 358
Homeless men, 227
Hospital for chronic diseases, 260
Hospital Survey, 219
Hospitals in epidemics, 87
Medical relief; health centers, 231
Memorial Hospital for cancer, etc.,
260
Milk and restaurants, 391
Nurses, 159, 289, 358
Nurses, eight-hour day, 263
Public assistance, 320
Readers in schools, 158
Reinvestigation of ERR, 114
Sanitation police, 87
School children, 158
VI
Tuberculosis, 117
Welfare Council meeting, 211
Welfare Department report, picto-
graphs from, 242
WPA teachers and problem pupils,
389
World's Fair grounds for recreation,
230
New York (state), 257
Hankers, pensions, 324
Board of Mediation, 323
Child labor amendment chances, 79
Department of Welfare, 120
Grading law, 259
Housing law, 24
Minimum wage, 153, 259
Prison guards, 262
Relief program, 354
School accounting, 85
Unemployment Insurance Law, 230
New York State Charities Aid Associa-
tion, retirement plan for employes,
263
New York University, 297
Reading clinic. 389
New York World's Fair, 162
New Yorkers, personals, 393
Newark, N. J., Junior League, 230
Newbold, F. L., What about volunteers?,
214
Newburgh, N. Y., 116
Newman, Freeman and Holzinger's
Twins. 271
News notes, 58, 88, 161, 162, 393
Newsholme, Sir Arthur, 371
Newspaper campaign, 56
Newspaper Guild, 55
Newspapers, statistics on relief, 194
Nolen, John, death, 89
North, W. W., Volunteers venture, 39
North Carolina, 355
Child labor, 258
Compensation, 321
North Dakota, 391
Military training, 84
Northfield, Mass., 303
Notices, 298
Nuffield, Lord, 360
Nunivak Eskimos, 195
Nunn, T. H., death, 265
Nurses, 52, 158, 298, 358, 359
In the Making (film), 362
New York City, 289
New York City, eight-hour day, 263
Voice training, 159
Nursing, 52, 158, 358
Curriculum Guide for Schools of, 367
Publications, 53
Safer, 111
See also Public health nursing
Nursing education, widening horizons,
motion picture scenes (ills.), 306
Nutrition. 340
o
Occupations, 303
O'Connor, Kate, 327
O'Connor, Margaret W., death, 298
Officers, 26, 234
Ogburn, W. F., Ill
Ohio, 156
Libraries, 116
Relief, 194
Sherrill report and social welfare, 246
Ohio flood, 73
Relief — third stage, 79
Ohio State University, exploratory
course 389
Oklahoma, 259, 323, 355
Relief, 244
Old age, pensions, with maps, 156
Seven age_s of man (cartoon), 66
Old age assistance, 51, 324, 384
Federal funds, 196, 197
Liens and estates, 355
Old age benefits, 52, 114, 195, 228, 257,
292, 324
Applications, 228, 229
Old age insurance, 389
Unclaimed benefits, 356
Underworld establishments, 356
Old Age Insurance, Bureau of, 356
Oliver and Dudley's This New America,
271
One of the many (verse), 9
Oregon, 323
Relief, 244
Orphans, 362
Orthopedic School, 293
Orton's Reading, Writing and Speech
Problems in Children, 122
Paige, C. P., Chicago's unemployables,
Pamphlets, 201, 266, 394
Health, welfare, etc., 160
List, 329
Professional and personal, 299
Parental standards, 108
Paris Exposition, social work at, 314
Parole, 319
Illinois, 83
Parran, Thomas, 198, 339
Ind
e x
Parran's Shadow on the Land, 335
Parrott, Lisbeth, 100 young delinquents
— and why, 344
Parsons' A Puritan Outpost, 303
Pasadena, Cal., employment and coun-
seling center, 216
Pashkas, the, eat breakfast, 108
Paterson and Darley's .Men, Women,
and Jobs, 124
Patronage, 224
Patterns and portents in private
agencies, 133
Patterson's We and Our Neighbors, 398
Paupers, 113
Peace Collection, 89
Peace Day, 152
Penu School, 21
Pennsylvania. Compensation Law,
sociographics, 259
Goodrich Plan for relief, 289
Labor disputes, pamphlet, 323
Mothers' aid, 248
New public assistance laws, 228
New relief procedure, 49
Penal system, 262
Public assistance, 385
Relief, 18, 82, 354
Relief program for, 10
School laws, 322
Welfare legislation, 247
Pennsylvania, University of, institute
for government service, 254
Penology, 278
Pensioners, cooperative venture, 347
Pensions, plans, 384
Private, 324
Perkins Institution, 315
Perna, Carra, 146
Perry, C. A., 360
Personality, 60
Personals, 25, 57, 87, 119, 162, 202, 233,
264, 297, 327, 360, 392
Comings and goings, 328
Personnel, training, 161
Pettit, Walter, When outsiders look in,
251
Pfeiffer, C. W., 187
Phelps's Principles and Laws of
Sociology, 121
Philadelphia, housing conference, 23
Martin Orthopedic School, 293
Volunteer Service Bureau, 214
Philanthropy. 342
Philippines, education in, 158
Photographs, 313
Physicians, Committee of, principles
and proposals, 372
Picketing, 387
Pittsburgh, mergers, 232
Planning, research, 358
Planning Annual, 30
Play, therapy by, 293
Play schools, 279
Playgrounds, 29
Pneumonia, 23, 358, 390
Poison gas, 48
Police, 28
Pollak Foundation, 259
Pollock, H. M., death, 120
Pontiac strike, 382
Poor Law Studies, 167
Poorhouses, problems, 384
Portsmouth, Ohio, 235
Potter, E. C. (letter), 362
Potter, Nan, Nursing is my job, 142
Potter, Virginia, death, 393
Pray, K. L. M., 10, 186
Presbyterian Hospital and Medical
Center. 53
Pressure groups, 35
Pringle, J. C. (letter), 59
Prison Congress, annual meeting of
A. P. A., 356
Prison Industries Reorganization
Administration, 262, 388
Prisoners, nothing to do, 276 (ill.), 277
Teacher training for. 197
Prisons, 91, 121. 165, 364
American Association and affiliates,
392
Education, 395
England, 262
Horse collars and prisons, 277
Problem of labor in, 277
Work habit. 278
Private agencies. Patterns and portents
in the field of. 133
Probation, 206, 319
Professional notes, 56, 85, 118, 160, 200,
232, 263, 296, 326, 358, 391
Appointments. 202
Coming events, 327
Publications, 57, 86, 360
Professionalism in social welfare. 30*>
Propaganda Analysis. Institute fur, 359
Psychiatry, 122, 326
Fellowships, 391
Psychoanalysis, 30
Psychologists. 395
Psychology, 121, 206
Public Administration, directory, 162
Public Affairs Pamphlet, 158
Public assistance, 51, 81, 157, 196, 291,
320, 354, 384
Limitation of service by agencies, 81
Personnel in agencies, 384
Pressures, up and down, 355
Public health, 22, 53, 86, 118, 159, 198,
230, 260, 325, 357, 399
Coming events, 263
District centers, 22
Gains and hopes for health, 339
Municipal advisers, 159
Notes, 261
Proposed legislation, 55
Publications, 23
Publicizing, 57
Registration of doctors, 86
Rural, 22, 92
State cooperation with Social Security
Act, 22
Women's degrees at Harvard, 22
Public health nurses, publication on, 232
Public health nursing, 341
Nursing is my job, 142
Salaries, 358
Summer course. 161
Public medical care, 371
Public medicine, 301
Public opinion, 4
Public service, personal notes, 234, 265
Public service unions, 255
Public welfare 4, 18, 112, 258
Administration, two studies, 258
Citizen boards, 258
1'ederal bill, section quoted, 258
State studies, 19
States look at, 135
These public welfare boards, 67
Washington meeting, 18
PWA, housing, 23, 319
Puerto Rico, 259
Birth control, 199
Pugsley Award, 226
Pump priming, 385
Purchasing power of old people, 347
Purdy, Lawson, 264
Quakers, 153
-Miners and, 1 1 1
Quarantine, 159
R
Racketeering, charity and, 284
Radicalism, 310
Radio, good will rourt, 15
Teaching by, Chicago. 322
Radio Pratique, 159, 325
Railroads, 196
Peace on, 54
Workers, 292, 356
Railway Labor Act, 110
Rail, Udo, Self-help, practical and
proved, 346
Ramsdell, L. A., Professionalism in
social welfare, 309
Randall. M. G., 341
Randolph, Kathleen (letter). 203
Raper's Preface to Peasantry, 165
Raup's Education and Organized
Interests in America, 30
Reader interest. 359
Reading, New York City schools, 158
Reading clinic, 389
Recreation, 230, 255
In "mixed company," 93
Recreation movement, 342
Recreation News (magazine), 360
Red Cross, 326, 327, 359
Byways, 260
China and, 358
Nurses, 159
Ohio flood and, 19, 73
Rehabilitation after the floods, 250
Redmond. W. B., 198
Reform, The, Andersons, 77
Rehabilitation, 231
Farmers, 349
Reiss's British and American Housing,
335
Relief, 18, 27, 49, 61, 106, 113, 183, 384
Behind the totals, 254
Case work in the administration of, 38
Chiselers, figures on, 382
Chiseling stories, 78
Clients must work, 354
Clothing, 50
Farmers, 348
Federal, next steps, 192
Federal and state. 156
Federal and state, costs (diag.), 385
Federal problem, 194
Future expansion of public, 6
Government and, 354
Hourly earnings of employed workers
on (diag.), 113
Kansas Citv, 18
Mayors and, 384
Merit system in. 222
New Jersey. 1936-1937, 99
Pennsylvania program, 10
Policies, 18
Problem of ending, 14
Program, 164
Proposed commission on unemploy-
ment and relief, 224
Protest against withdrawal, 385
Publications, 50
Purges, 354
Record and report, 291
Sit-down strikes and, 69
Stock market and an agency, 282
Straws in the wind, 382
Study of workers on, 227
"This business of relief," 38
Urban areas, annual, 1929-1935
(diag.), 194
\Vest and southwest, 243
WPA and, 352
Relief workers, dictation simplified, 219
Religion, 122
Religious organizations, charity
racketeering and. 284
Remington-Rand, 1 12
Reno, Nev., 390
Repartee, 254
Reports I've seen, 312
Resignations, 1 20
Restaurants, 391
Rating, 22
Reynolds, W. S., 188
Rhode Island, Minimum wage, 24
Richmond, Va., welfare budget, 390
Riley, B. C., 350
Roberts, Alice (letter), 362
Robinson, Florence R., death, 26
Robinson's Supervision of Social Case
Work, 271
Robison's Can Delinquency Be
Measured?, 28
Roche, Josephine, 339, 341, 392
Rochester, N. Y., week-end sentences,
262
Rockefeller Foundation, 295
Roosevelt, F. I)., letters to, excerpts, 305
Rorem. C. R., 296
Ross, Mary, 257
Routzahn, E. G., 338 (with portrait),
341
Routzahn, M. S., 200
Rowntree's The Human Needs of
Labour, 300
Rural electrification, 259
Rural health. 325
Rural planning, 364
Rural Settlement, 111
Russia, education, 91
Venereal disease, 261
Workers, 293
Ryan, P. E. (letter), 299
Ryan's Industrial Relations in the San
Francisco Building Trades, 206
Ryerson, E. L. (letter), 27
Safety, WPA campaign, 353
St. Louis, Mo., 194
Brown Memorial Building (with ill.),
13
Community givers analyzed, 56
Cooperative gardening, 347
Financing, 22
Occupations of members of stuial
centers (graph), 229
Reader interest, 359
Volunteers, _230
Volunteers in parole work, 20
St. Paul, Minn., C ominunity Chest
booklet, 392
Mexicans, 83
Salomon, Alice. 264, 360
Salomon's Education for Social Work
396
Salsberry, Pearl, 392
San Francisco, birth control, 294
Building trades, 206
Recreation Commission, 83
San Toaquin Valley, 291
Sanger, Margaret, 294
Sanitation, 391
Sayings, 1, 33, 65, 97, 131, 197, 209
241, 273, 305. 337, 369
Scandinavia, syphilis, 86
Schaeffer, P. N. (letter), 267
Schmidt, August, 283
Schneider's More Security f<;r Old Age
331
Schneiderman, Rose, 1W
School bus, 21
School health, 269
Schools, 84, 322. 389
Accounting, 85
Expenditure and income in "rich"
and "poor" states, 84
Long vacation, 279
New York City, 158
Schweinitz, Karl de, 328, 385
Schweinit/,' Octupations in Retail
Stores, 302
Scottsboro case, 255, 351
Seamen, 28
Seattle, hospital labor controversy. .W
Post-Intelligencer, 55
Security, Behind the totals, 254
Foreign countries, 293
Growing pains, 42
Measures, four types. 6
Self-help, California SKA. 354
Practical and proved, 346
Ind
Senate committee to investigate unem-
ployment and relief, 320
Settlement summers, 230
Sex, 396
Expression, 44
Sex education, 169
Sharecroppers, 1 6
Sheffield, A. E. (letter), 27
Sheffield's Social Insight in Case
Situations, 300
Sheldon, Rowland C., death, 26
Sherrill, C. O., 246
Sherwood, Louise, One of the many
(verse), 9
Ships, radio prntii]ue. 325
Shryock's The Development of Modern
Medicine, 364
Sibling rivalry, 304
Sickness, 165
Signatures of friends, illegible. 109, 124
Silicosis, 259
Simmons, (',. II.. death, 328
Simple world — eh what? (cartoons), 210
Simpson's The Negro in the Philadel-
phia Press, 271
Sit-down strikes, 24, 47. 112
Relief in the sit-down strike, 69
Six Town Plan, 296
Slavson's Creative Group Education, 333
Slemons, C. C., 57
Slesinger's Education and the Class
Struggle, 236
Slums. Washington. D. C., 286
Smith, Edwin S.. 188
Smith, Ethel, 15
Snow, W. F., 327
Social action, 138
Social agencies, directory of, 365
Social control, 32
Social engineering. 211. 213
Social ethics, fallacy, 241
Social front, 16, 49. 81, 112. 155, 194,
226, 256, 290, 320, 352, 384
Social group work, 11
Social hygiene, groups, 86
Social Hygiene Day poster (ill.), 262
Social institutions, 169
Social insurance, 16
In the courts, 17
Social mores, 108
Social practice, education for. 139
Social Science Research Council,
fellowships, 360
Social security. 182, 186, 187
Age data, 292
Bibliography, 21
Change in the law, 292
Drawing the line, 256
Federal-state cooperation (maps), 2
Harvard faculty and, 322
In action, 157
In various states. 292
Local policies, 157
Record and report, 258
Rulings, 293
Social work and, 5
Social workers and, 104
Study and report, 293
Social Security Act. 195
Administration, 16, 155
Amendments proposed, 257
Assistance grants, 20
Banks and, 17
Changing, 48, 155
Company plans under, 17
Overhauling, 356
Social workers and, 71
State plans for assistance under, 81
Supreme Court upholds, 192
Wbo comes under?, 115
Social Security Board, 195, 224, 254,
389
Administration, 51
Administration and information, 115
Annual report. 83
Applications, 114
Appointments. 288
Bookkeeping, 324
Claims and experience with them, 229
Figures, 390
Financing, 84
Labor trouble, 257, 293
Lump sum payments, 257
New racket, 390
No information, 257
Old age benefits, 52
Personnel, 84
Public assistance. 51
Publication, 257
Record and report, 156
Research. 352
Seal (with ill.), 115
Statistics of relief. 255
Unclaimed numbers, 390
Unemployment compensation, 352
Warnings, 114
Social Security Institutes, 292
Social welfare, professionalism in, 309
Social work, at the Paris Exposition,
314
Books, 58
Change of public opinion from 1916
to 1937 (cartoons), 132
Clean slate for a fresh start, 7
Courses and schools, 119
Meeting of two areas — case work and
group work, 102
Prizes for papers on, 233
Social security and, 5
Students in, 56
Training, 89
Uniform accounting, 296
Social Work Publicity Council, 188
Awards, 200
Social Work Today (magazine), 264
Social Work Year Book. 119, 164
Social workers, 71
Legislation and, 56
Pressure groups and, 35
Sample group at Conference .(ill-). 180
Social action and, 138
Social security for, 104
See also American Association of
Social Workers
Society girls, 39
Sociology, 121
Somervell, B. B., 254
On rotation, 256
South, 165
Children born, 160
South Africa, 293
South Carolina, child labor, 258
Compensation, 321
Southern California, University of, 160
Group work, 55
Southside, Va., 153
Spain, 153
Aid to, 163
Child refugees, 297
Children of, 191, 383
Speech disorders, 359
Spicer's The Book of Festivals. 33J
Springer, Gertrude, Brace up.
Theodore, 316
Children aren't trash, 75
Luck isn't enough, 144
Miss Bailey's brief case, 3
Mist* Harry meets a merit system,
222
Security has its growing pains. 42
"So we told 'em plain facts," 106
Social workers grope for unity, 179
Standard of living, 281
Standardization projects, 260
Stanford, R. C., 289. 351
Stark, Louis, on relief. 49
State universities, 122
States, legislation, 114
Public welfare ami. 135, 385
Social welfare legislation, 246
Steel industry. 356
Lewis and Taylor confer, 79
Sterilization, 124
Stern's Applied Dietetics, 205
Stillbirths, 341
Stock market, relief agency and, 282
Stotsenburg, M. B., 73
Strain's Being Born, 169
Straus, Nathan, 360
Street, Elwood, 326
Strikers, relief for, 290
Strikes, 188
Chicago relief, 385
Measures of coping with, 112
Sit-down, 24
Students, aid from NYA, 85
Federal aid, 322
In social work, 56
Peace Day and, 152
Sturges and Corwin's Opportunities for
the Medical Education of Negroes,
167
Sugar Act, 322
Summer courses, 201
Summer outings, 294
Summer play schools, 279
Summer schools, 161
Supreme Court. 8
Minimum wage, 110
Survey, The, appreciations, 59, 90, 235
Survey Associates, agency members,
list, 150
Anniversary messages from friends,
380-381
Celebrating the twenty-fifth year, 148
Surveys, current, 161
Svendsen, Margaret, 7
Swartz, M. O., death, 89
Sweden, tour in, 161
Swift. Linton, 71
Syphilis, 86, 199. 200, 230, 335
Campaign in Chicago and New York,
296
Conference on, 54
Public education about, 57
Signs about, in public places. S6
Taboo breakers, 199
Taft, C. P., 182
Tandy, E. C., 386
Tasmania, 158
Tattooing. 155
Tax label, 260
Taylor, F.thel C., death, 265
Taylor, Graham R., 361
Taylor, L. D., 190
e x
Taylor. M. C, 79
Taylor's Chicago Commons, 91
Technological change, 5
Teeters' They Were in Prison, 364
Tenancy, 16
Tennessee, 194
Meanest racket, 3J4
Relief, 18
Tennessee, University of, 198
Terhune, L. B. (letters), 203, 267
Texas, relief, 244
Textiles, 196
Tri-partite Conference, 111
Theodore, 316
Therapy by play, 293
Thomasites, 158
Thompson, Ruth, 217
Thorndike's The Teaching of Controver-
sial Subjects. 207
Thornton's The Social Component in
Medical Care, 168
Thwing, C. F., death, 328
Timely Service Society, 285
Toledo, Ohio, 321
Industrial Peace Board, 323
luvenile Court, 377
Relief chiselers. 382
Tousley, C. M., 361
Townsend Clubs, 384
Townsend Plan, test, 80
Trade Unions, Primer of, 392
Trailer library, 116
Trailer office, 257
Trailers, 50
Transiency, 362
Mobility in trouble, 307
Transients, 18, 299
Report, 195
Travelers Aid, 361
Trenton, N. J., relief policy. ?27
Trowbridge, G. S. (letter), 59
Truck gardening, 347
Tuberculosis, 117
Case histories, 118
CCC and, 261
Detroit, 53
Mortality, 261
National Association, 328
Negroes, 358
Schools and colleges, 1 1 7
Tweed, Harrison, 15
Twentieth Century Fund, 318
Twins. 271
Typewriting, 330, 395
Typists and stenographers, training of
those on relief, 227
u
Unemployables. Chicago. 373
Unemployed, classification. 81
Counting, 152
Digging for gold, 256
Registration. 322
Unemployment. 164
Definition, 59
Fortune (magazine) survey. 318
Residual, 5
State acts, 51
Unemployment census, 288. 352. 370
(ills.)
Unemployment compensation, 84. 155
195, 352, 388
Administration, 257. 321
Constitutionality. 155
Coordination, 322
Coordination with employment
services, 229
Courts and, 321
Laws, 114, 256
Movies, 389
Pennsylvania law, sociographics. 259
Personnel, 389
Private plans, 388
Publications, 196
State systems, 352
Unemployment Compensation Admin-
istrators, 352
Unemployment insurance laws, 17, 52
Union clinic, 323
Unions, 188, 241, 392
Public service. 255
LTnited Automobile Workers, 382
General Motors and, 79
Responsibility, 355
United Relief Association, 284
University in Exile, 111
Vacations. 279
Van de Wall and Liepman's Music in
Institutions, 29
Van Oriel, Agnes, 184
Van Kleeck, Mary, 189
Van Loon, Hendrik, 257
Yeblen College, 322
Venereal disease, 86, 111, 160, 199
Russia, 261
Vested interests. 14
Veterans of Foreign Wars, demands,
324
Yilla; Pancha (letter). 395
Virginia, public welfare, 1 9
VII
Vision, 118
Vital statistics, 325
Vitamins, 118
Vocational guidance, 302
Vocations, 158
Vollmer and Parker's Crime, Crooks
and Cops, 268
Vollmer's The Police and Modern
Society, 28
Volunteers, reading list for, 296
Society girls venture, 39
What about volunteers?, 214
Where volunteers come natural, 311
Young, 116
w
Wage-and-hour bill, 258
Wages, price of low, 224, 226
Wagner, R. F., 181, 182
Wagner-Steagall Housing Bill, 288
Wald, Lillian D., 101. 393
Playground named for, 264
Walkill Prison, 262
Walter. F. E., 15
War, 326
Children of, 383
New York City children against, 117
Warburg, Felix, death, 351
Washington (state), cooperative project
of old men, 347
Minimum wage, 110
Relief, 18, 244, 245
Volunteers, 311
Welfare department, 20
Washington, D. C., alley children, 19
Aunt Minnie's new house, 286
Group Health Association, 383
Hopkins Place project, 286
Washington University, St. Louis,
Brown Memorial Building (with
ill.), 13
Watson, J. M. (letter), 90
"We demand — •," 35
Webb, J. N., 227
Weeks, "Grandma," 196
Weigel, J. C., 292, 298
Weinfeld's Labor Treaties and Labor
Compacts, 302
Welfare, federal department, 289
Reducing case budgets, 42
Welfare budget, 390
Welfare work in this real world of
ours, 211
Wembridge, E. R., Andersons reform,
77
Evolution of Carra Perna, the, 146
Goldie and Gracie step out, 44
He knew what he wanted, 12
Pashkas eat breakfast, 108
West, relief agencies in the, 243
West, Walter, 104, 105
West Virginia, 389
Compensation department annex, 257
Westchester County, 360
Wexberg's Our Children in a Changing
World, 270
Whipping post, 48
White, R. C, 258
White, Dr. William A., death, 120
White Plains, child labor, 50
Whitehurst's Dear Mr. President, 305
Wickenden, Elizabeth, 362
Transiency, 307
Wiehl, D. G., 55
Wilde's Health, Sickness and
Psychology, 30
Wilkie, H. M., 15
Williams, C. V., death, 361
Williams and Heath's Learn and Live,
238
Williamsburg Houses, 319
Wilson, J. O., 185
Wilson, L. R., 87
Wilson's The Short Contact in Social
Case Work. 238
Winant, J. G., 87
Winnipeg, 56
Winslow, A. D., relief chiseling
stories. 78
Winslow, C. E.-A., 340
Winslow, M. N., 190
Winston-Salem, N. C., 116
Winthrop's Are You a Stockholder?,
170
Wisconsin, Industrial Commission, 195
Labor, 196
Labor Relations Board, 323
Public welfare, 19
Welfare legislation, 247
Wisconsin, University of. 197
President Glenn Frank and. 14
Workers' school. 389
Witte, E, W., 185
Well. Margaret, 74
Women, hazards in returning to jobs,
25
Report on women in industry, 254
Shoppers and fair standards, 25
Women's Charter, 254
Wood, M. W., 86
Wood, Martha. 190
Worcester, Mass., exhibit, 22
Work camps, 322
VIII
Workers, 322
Jobs, and, 54, 112
Record and report, 323
Workers' education, 25, 389
WPA, 35, 49, 115, 164, 192, 194, 318,
321, 384. 385
Adult education project, 353
Appropriation, 224, 226
Charges against and denial. 256
Classification of unemployed. 81
Demonstrations against lay-offs (ills.),
34
Dismissals, 290
Employable workers, 354
Exemptions, 256
Grading workers, 353
Hopkins and, 115
Ind
e x
Injuries to workers, 82
Legal residence of workers, 81
Local relief and, 352
Mine-sealing, 357
Nursing projects, 158
Outlines of workers, 113
Projects for the blind, 353
Prospect ; problems ; federal policy,
321
Reductions and protests, 1 6
Regional differences in programs, 243
Rolls and cuts, 115
Rotation, 256
Rulings, 116
Safety campaign, 353
Selected accomplishments (pictorial
chart), 291
Social workers and, 71
Statistics, 194
Various projects, 353
Withdrawal of recreation workers,
protest, 226
Worthington, William (letter). 362
Wriston's The Nature of a Liberal
College, 268
Wylie, W.. G., 219
Yale University, Child and Society,
course on, 326
Professor Jerome Davis and, 14
Yardsticks, 27
Yonkers, community chest device, 22
Youngdahl, B. E., 185, 187
Young's Social Treatment in Probatioi
and Delinquency, 206
Youth, 62, 197, 398
Absence of character and aspiration,
Education and, 158
Federal aid, 322 '
Zabriskie's Mother and Baby Care in
Pictures, 60
Zelditch, Morris, 327
Zeller's Pressure Politics in New York
269
Zoning, 238
Zorbaugh, H. W., 319
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office:
762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Editorial Office:
112 East 19 Street, New York
To which all communications should be sent
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PAIMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, associate editors;
RUTH A. LERRICO, HELEN CHAMBERLAIN, assistant
editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., LEON WHIPPLE, JOANNA C. COL-
CORD, RUSSELL H. KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
JANUARY 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 1
Miss Bailey's Brief Case GERTRUDE SPRINGER 3
Social Work and Social Security EWAN CLAGUE 5
A Clean Slate for a Fresh Start NEWTON D. BAKER 7
Shall We Amend ? BEULAH AMIDON 8
One of the Many ' LOUISE SHERWOOD 9
A Program for Pennsylvania 10
Group Workers Organize 11
Behavior As It Is Behaved— III 12
He Knew What He Wanted ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 12
Brown Memorial Building 13
The Common Welfare 14
The Social Front 16
WPA • Social Insurance • Relief • Public Welfare • Citi-
zen Service • Libraries • National Conference • Public
Assistance • About Education • Community Funds • The
Public's Health • Housing • Industry and Workers • People
and Things
Readers Write 27
Book Reviews 28
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• Abolition of poverty seems to be a hu-
manitarian, not a business goal. — EDWARD
A. FII.EXE, Boston.
• It is now apparent that under the opera-
tion of the law of the survival of the fittest
it was not the fit that survived but the
lucky. — JOHN" A. LAPP. It'ashington, D. C.
• You are welcome to use the schoolhouse
to debate all proper questions in, but such
things as railroads are impossibilities and
rank infidelities. — Board of Education, Lan-
caster, Ohio, 1829.
e Social security may be an epochal term or
a whimsical technique depending upon how
well it is administered by the state agencies
responsible for it. — HOWARD W. ODUM, Uni-
versity of North Carolina.
• Not the wearing of solemnity as a gar-
ment, but the capacity for seriousness, is one
of the moral arts of a century ago which
we might do well to recover for our edu-
cation.— DR. CHARLES A. BROWNE, U. S.
Department of Agriculture.
• We will have no great decline in crime
until the gulf between rich and poor, the edu-
cated and the ignorant, the favored and the
under-privileged is very much narrowed. —
AUSTIN H. MAcCoRMicic, commissioner of
correction, New York City.
So They Say
• The "white man's burden" has been
mainly one of hypocrisy. — PROF. EARNEST
A. HOOTON, Harvard University.
• The more ardent spirits among the youth
of today crave most of all some creed worth
dying for. — VIRGINIA C. GILDERSLEEVE. dean,
Barnard College, New York.
• The greatest danger to education in
America is the attempt, under the guise of
patriotism, to suppress freedom of teach-
ing, inquiry and discussion. — ROBERT M.
HUTCHINS, president, University of Chicago.
• Social security is primarily another at-
tempt to compel the mechanics of private
enterprise to accept its proper responsibility
for the maintenance of the human raw mate-
rial by which it lives. — WALTER MILLIS in
The Virginia Quarterly Review.
• Few social issues can be simplified to the
point of undisputed agreement until they
have been clarified through long periods of
experimentation in the actual laboratory of
experience, a laboratory as ruthless as it is
discerning. — FRANK KINCDON to New Jersey
Conference of Social Work.
• What the wisest and best parent wants
for his own child, that must the community
want for all its children. — JOHN DEWEY.
• Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to relieve!
— J. ARTHUR KELLY in /. P. A.'s column in
A ew York Herald Tribune.
• It is not true that a man needs little be-
cause he is poor. As a matter of fact, the less
a man has the more he needs. — ALFONS
GOLDSCHMIDT at 1936 Industrial Relations
Institute.
•The League of Nations recognizes, intensi-
fies and does its utmost to preserve the con-
ventions of nationalism and the emotions
of patriotism — H. G. WELLS in The Anat-
omy of Frustration.
• The cold, though often soft-pedaled fact
is that many delinquents are not and cannot
be benefited by any technique as yet at the
disposal of the social worker. — JAMES S.
OWENS, to New York State Conference on
Social Work.
• The lasting contributions of Athens to
humanity were mainly the product of what
any wealthy taxpayer would have called
"boondoggling." if the Greek tongue had ad-
mitted such a word. — DAVID CUSHMAN
COYLE to the American Library Association.
FEDERAL-STATE COOPERATION
FOR SOCIAL SECURITY
(Status of State Public Assistance Plans, Dec. 10,1936)
ALASKA
AID TO
THE NEEDY
AGED
AID TO
THE NEEDY
BLIND
AID TO
DEPENDENT
CHILDREN
APPROVED BY
SOCIAL SECURITY
BOARD
Pfopoied by *e Informoixxiol Service. Social Sccu'ily Board. Woihinglon. D.C.
THE SURVEY
JANUARY 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 1
Miss Bailey's Brief Case
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
MISS BAILEY picked a dead leaf off the little ivy-
plant on the office window sill and wondered
with a faint nostalgic twinge who would be
tending it this time next week. They'd been through a lot
of ups and downs together, she and the ivy, times when
they had weakened and almost given up, times when the\
had put out strong new growth only to have it blasted by
cold or heat or careless hands. "It's funny about social
workers and ivy," she cogitated. "We seem to take to each
other. Ivy is practically standard equipment in our offices.
We must have something in common. I suppose it's be-
cause we're both hard to kill. Well, goodbye, ivy, take
care of yourself. I'd take you with me if I knew myself
where I'm going."
All afternoon Miss Bailey had been taking mute fare-
wells of objects which for four years had been part of her
life. Her desk, which tomorrow would be someone else's,
was startlingly tidy. Her personal belongings were in her
brief case ready to go. In a few moments she would pass
through the door, the opening and closing of which repre-
sented the end of one experience and the beginning of
another. "And all I am taking with me that is visible to
the naked eye is one thin brief case."
With a little shiver of goose flesh she dropped into the
chair behind the desk which represented to her all the
security of old familiar habit.
"Why am I going to this
new job?" she asked herself
in sudden panic. "And what
is it anyway?"
Neither the new job nor
the decision to take it had
come suddenly. For more
than a year now Miss Bailey,
knowing her own tempera-
ment and its limitations, had
realized that her usefulness,
if any, lay in a field which,
if her faith and hope had any
basis, must be an expanding
one. She knew that relief
had to go on till something
WITH this issue THE SURVEY begins a new
series of the articles Miss Bailey Says . . .
which will turn on the local community aspects of
social security and public welfare services and the
activities of social workers in relation to them.
They will be based on the author's personal obser-
vations in the field undertaken with the cooperation
of the American Public Welfare Association. The
earlier series, turning on the activities of emer-
gency relief workers, began in THE MIDMONTHLY
SURVEY in March 1933 and ended in June 1936.
better took its place, but for months she had felt and gradu-
ally had become convinced that her own energies would be
spent best in speeding the coming of that something bet-
ter. Maybe it would not be so very much better at first,
but if it had direction to it, rhyme and reason and hope,
Miss Bailey, for one, wanted to go along with it.
Like most social workers who had survived the mael-
strom of mass relief and the fortuitous upheavals of its
administration, Miss Bailey had a profound longing for
foresight and order in any large scale approach to hu-
man affairs. She believed that the services within the
purview of the Social Security Act, inadequate though
they might seem in their beginnings, held the promise
of plan and order; and little by little she had come to
the conclusion that she wanted to stand with those who
were trying to make that promise a reality.
She had been aware of certain "passes" from Wash-
ington indicating that she might get herself a job there
if she liked. She was highly flattered, but on the whole
not interested. "Amelia, my girl," she told herself in
one of those two-o'clock-in-the-morning self-commu-
nions when the truth comes out, "You're not the stuff
that higher-ups are made of, and you might as well rec-
ognize it. You'd be a fish out of water there in Wash-
ington. Every time you heard a rule being made, you'd
start an argument, and be-
gin to holler about what it
would do to Mrs. Whooziz
and her six children. No,
Amelia, you'd better keep
out of that. If you're worth
your salt at all it's not where
rules are made but where
they have to be wangled."
No, it was not to Wash-
ington that Miss Bailey's
new job would take her. Of
that she was certain, but
otherwise she didn't know.
It sounded like the wide open
spaces.
"You see," her new boss
had said, "we are not official, but our whole stake is in
this business of public welfare administration, to help
make it just as good as it can possibly be under whatever
laws there are — until there are better ones. We believe
that about the most important link in the whole chain of
administration in these new security services is the last
one — right down at the end of the line where the benefit
meets the beneficiary, where the money actually passes
to your Mrs. Whooziz and her six children, to Old Man
Jones or blind Mary Smith. That's where this whole
thing will stand or fall, will gain or lose the public sup-
port that it must have if it is to prosper. And that's where
we want you to go."
"T)UT what on earth will I do when I get there?"
-U It had all seemed pretty vague to Miss Bailey
and it still did.
"A lot," the new boss replied. "You can find out why
things work well in some places and not in others. If the
social workers are tangled in techniques to the impatience
of a non-technical public you can help both sides to a bet-
ter perspective. As we see it both social workers and public
need a lot of understanding of each other in making
these new services work. And that's where you'll come in,
especially where situations are difficult and attitudes are
tense."
"Just an old trouble-shooter," said Miss Bailey, "and
about as popular as poison ivy."
"No, you're mistaken," countered the new boss. "You'll
be surprised. They'll love having some one to dump their
troubles on, and to blame for whatever goes wrong after-
ward. And remember, you aren't actually official. There
isn't anything you can really do. You'll just listen and
steer."
"And that, I suppose, makes it simple!"
Thinking back to that interview Miss Bailey wondered,
for the nth time, why she had taken the job. Probably,
she told herself, because of an insatiable curiosity to see
for herself just how this unpredictably vast public enter-
prise in human engineering was getting started, and how
the social workers were adjusting themselves to the new
social mechanism for their professional functioning. Did
they realize to what extent they, as tenders of the mech-
anism, had become the public's business? Had their ex-
periences in relief work prepared them to function suc-
cessfully in a critical political climate? Were they aware
of the extent to which public acceptance of the whole
enterprise would depend on their day to day interpreta-
tion of it? Did they realize that interpretation is not a
special something that a social worker does when she has
time but something she is doing every waking moment,
every time she opens her mouth, with every personal and
professional contact, from the grocer's delivery boy to the
president of the bank?
Miss Bailey didn't know the answers, but she had
taken the job and presently, she hoped, would be in a way
to find them. Would she find them in the office of some
state board or other, puzzled over its large new respon-
sibilities? In some city or county office where workers
accustomed to the routines of emergency relief were en-
deavoring to adjust to the broader philosophy inherent
in the social security services ? In some village or cross-
roads where social work is practiced in a close personal
and community relationship unknown in big cities? Well,
she'd try them all, the farther down the chain the better.
She herself had plenty to learn, and the best place to learn
was where the law and the policies and procedures actu-
ally met the ultimate consumer — at the start, Mrs. Whoo-
ziz and her six children, Old Man Jones, blind Mary-
Smith.
It was past five now and the outer office was quiet, the
staff gone home. Miss Bailey had made her goodbyes and
told them not to wait. She herself might as well be going.
There was nothing more to do here.
Her glance ran over the darkening office, past the ivy
on the window sill, to the brief case on the corner of the
desk. How little she was leaving — practically nothing ex-
cept the ivy. "But at least you're still alive, and you're
hard to kill." And the brief case — all she was taking
away — how thin it was! "I suppose it's like that with
social workers everywhere," she thought. "No one really
sees what we bring with us when we come or what we
take away when we go. But like the ivy we do survive.
Now what exactly, Amelia, did you bring to this job, and
what exactly, that isn't in that brief case, are you taking
to the new one ?"
About all she had brought, it now seemed to her —
though once she had thought differently — was a profound
faith in human beings "if you just see deep enough," and
a respect for their right to direct their own lives; that and
a kit of techniques which in four years had undergone
drastic change without notice. What she was taking away
came down to summing up what she had learned in these
four strenuous years of emergency relief. It was not sim-
ple to analyze, for many of the lessons were no more than
a firmer grasp of basic principles.
Well, name one.
All right, take public opinion. You could drive it, Miss
Bailey had learned, just so far and no farther. Its old pat-
tern of "the poor," who they were and how they ought
to behave, had been rudely shattered by events. The pub-
lic was still confused and a shade suspicious of the new pat-
tern forming within the framework of the security ser-
vices. Yet in any program of public welfare, Miss Bailey
knew, you had to have the public with you. Get too far
out in front of the thinking of the community and your
whole program might be sunk.
ONE thing she was sure she had learned and she knew
many other social workers had, too: to make those
compromises in practice, some of them pretty severe, by
which she could meet the public or its various segments, in
the area of its own experience, and go on with it from
that point into new areas of thinking and of acceptance.
It was no use at all to expect the public to accept a prin-
ciple new to it, just because some social worker said so.
Human nature isn't like that. Public understanding must
come first, and understanding would grow out of obser-
vation— in other words local acceptance of the principal is
rooted in the soil of performance as it shows itself in every
community up and down the land. And public opinion in
matters of social welfare is no more nor less than the sum
total of local acceptance. Certainly it would get you no-
where on this new social front to write the public off as
unintelligent or plain dumb. There was meat in that ob-
servation of Professor Odum's that she had picked up
somewhere or other, "When I am in a quarrel with the
public I figure that the public is probably 49 percent right."
THF SURVEY
So much for public opinion. What else have you
learned, Amelia?
"I've learned — at least I hope I've learned — what my
betters have long known," Miss Bailey answered herself,
"that social workers can't do everything at once and some
things they can't do at all. The trick is to know what to
tackle and what to let go, to sense what is really impor-
tant in a given situation and concentrate on it, letting the
side issues go by. Just like Nellie didn't," thought Miss
Bailey, with a quick throwback of memory to her long
past childhood.
Nellie, the dog on the Kansas ranch where the Bailey-
boys and girls grew up, had a passion for barking at wag-
ons. Since wagons passed the ranch house infrequently
Nellie prolonged her pleasure by going out to meet them
across the level prairie, barking them up to and far on
past the house, and then returning to the barn to pant and
sleep off the excitement. On this particular day Nellie had
gone through the barking routine and back to the barn
where she promptly produced seven puppies. And the
young Amelia's mother, looking at her, had remarked,
"Nellie, I should think you might have let that last wagon
go by."
"Yes," Miss Bailey smiled a little as she pulled on her
hat and reached for her brief case, "there are some wagons
that we can well let go by and save our breath for more
productive enterprises than barking."
The time had come. She snapped off the desk lamp and
turned to the door. As it swung open the lights in the
outer office blazed up. The staff was there, clear down to
the newest office boy, waiting to join in a last "Good luck,
Miss Bailey, good luck, good luck."
"And how I need it," she told herself as she crossed the
threshold out of the old undertaking and into the new.
Social Work and Social Security
By EWAN CLAGUE
Associate Director, Bureau of Research and Statistics, Social Security Board
SO far as we can now foresee, the economic outlook
in this country is for continued insecurity and de-
pendency on a large scale. This does not mean that
the dark days of the last six years will continue — the whole
situation should be eased very much by the return of good
times. It is even possible that for brief peaks of business
prosperity the workers of the nation may once more experi-
ence peak employment at rising wage rates. A steady,
sustained rise in commodity prices, especially if accom-
panied by the outbreak of war abroad, might easily produce
a sharp prosperity curve with the next few years.
Such developments, however, in all likelihood will be of
a transitory character. The feverish activity of peak pros-
perity usually breaks sharply. This country has never
maintained extremely high business levels for more than
two or three years at the most. However, the important
question is not how long we shall stay at the top of the
curve, but where the general average level of business will
be maintained. Even on this point the outlook seems un-
usually good ; it seems more than likely that during the
next decade we may find ourselves on the prosperity level
of the nineteen-twenties.
The darker side of the outlook for the years ahead is
due to the fact that all the people in this country are not
likely to share proportionately in the better times. Many
students of the economic situation have pointed out again
and again that the labor market in the near future is not
going to be a healthy one — healthy, that is, from the point
of view of the worker himself. My own conclusions on this
point are based upon two fundamental facts: first, the
shift in the age distribution of the American working popu-
lation, coupled with the long periods of unemployment
experienced during the depression, is producing a consid-
erable group of older workers who will have difficulty in
finding places in private employment ; second, the tech-
nological developments in industry are proceeding so
rapidly that the average worker is unable to keep pace.
JANUARY 1937
So far as the first point is concerned, we can already see
from data collected through the Works Progress Adminis-
tration and the relief agencies that an undue proportion
of workers above the age of forty-five is still in need of
government work or relief. This fact does not mean that
business corporations are laying off their older workers;
such evidence as we have indicates that most stable busi-
nesses hold their older workers just as long as possible. The
difficulty arises from the fact that once the older worker
has been laid off because of a bankruptcy or a serious busi-
ness contraction, it is exceedingly difficult for him to obtain
another position.
^pECHNOLOGICAL change is not a new develop-
-1- ment in America ; it has gone on for a hundred years,
and it will continue. However, there is some evidence indi-
cating that the rate of such advance is generally increasing
throughout industry. Perhaps in small ways rather than in
spectacular developments, the techniques of production are
being steadily improved by engineers and managers. Thus
a given skill or occupation may prove to be comparatively
short-lived in modern industry, and the worker must be
prepared to acquire, use and discard several different
skills in the course of his working years. On the other
hand, the worker of today lives longer than Americans
once did, and so must earn his livelihood over a longer
period, usually with a progressively decreasing capacity for
adjustment. In brief, one might say that the coming indus-
trial system will require increasing flexibility and adapta-
bility in its labor force, while the working population
because of its increasing average age probably will become
steadily less flexible and adaptable.
From this short summary I would conclude that the
prospect is for a fairly heavy volume of "residual unem-
ployment" during the coming years of prosperity, an
unemployment which, on the surface, will be very difficult
to understand in the face of increasing output, higher divi-
dends, and general business prosperity. This residual group
of workers may, to some extent, be supported by relatives
and may, therefore, gradually retire, however unwillingly,
from the labor market. But the rest will be found either on
government work program jobs, or as employable appli-
cants for direct relief. Even a work program will encoun-
ter increasing difficulties; while the volume of unemploy-
ment is large, there may be such a representation of various
types of skills that works projects can be manned ade-
quately, but when the level of private employment shortens
the number available for the works program, the latter
may be handicapped by a complete lack of certain necessary
types of workers. Hence that program might of necessity
be curtailed faster than the decline in unemployment, ex-
cept insofar as it could be reshaped into a definite training
or retraining program.
THUS it would seem that there will be at least four
different types of security measures required in this
country: first, a public assistance and relief program for the
aged, the blind, the dependent children, and other needy
unemployables (direct unemployment relief for employ-
ables may have to be added to this program) ; second, an
unemployment compensation program to cover those who
are temporarily out of work in the ordinary course of
industrial change; third, a government works program to
absorb at least a portion of the long time unemployment
cases; and fourth, a system of contributory old age retire-
ment for those wage earners who have passed the age when
they can support themselves in industrial employment.
There is also the possibility that some kind of broad gauge
health program for the nation may be added to this list.
In this difficult social and economic situation, social
work has a most important contribution to make. If my
diagnosis is correct, it appears that the problem of individ-
ual maladjustment will assume more of a mass character
than it ever has in the past. We in social work have long
been aware of the conflict between the two schools of
thought : those who contend that the economic problem of
unemployment is a mass problem only, with little or no
need for individualized treatment of the afflicted ; and
those who not so much have contended as emphasized that
the maladjustment of the individual is an important factor
in his particular plight. It now looks as if the two schools
might almost merge their differences in a single approach
to the problem. This unified approach is one which neces-
sarily must stress the mass nature of the burden, and which
also must insist upon a provision of individualized treat-
ment along many different lines. Such individualized treat-
ment might consist of training in the works program,
placement in a more satisfactory job, attempts at the solu-
tion of family difficulties, adequate provision for ill health
and accidents, and so on.
In my opinion the development of the problems I am
trying to outline will lead to the continued expansion of
the methods of public relief and social security — and away
from the methods of private social work. In the develop-
ment of public welfare departments, no matter how much
of the newer thought may be incorporated in their struc-
ture and function, we can hardly avoid retaining substan-
tial residues of the formal legalities of the poor law —
emphasis on formal legal rights and uniformity of treat-
ment, rather than on individualization. It could hardly be
otherwise. Government must always work on the principle
of providing universal coverage of the class on a uniform
basis of treatment. That which would be individualized
treatment in a private agency oftentimes becomes favorit-
ism and discrimination in a public one. High standards and
limited intake are normal in private social work. A sharing
of grants by dividing up the available funds among all the
eligibles has been a common practice in government or-
ganizations. The problem which faces the social worker is
how to apply the principles which have advanced us so far
in private social work to the more complex, slow moving
agencies of government.
The entrance of social security upon the scene will have
a profound effect upon public welfare development in this
country. The public assistance features of the Social Se-
curity Act are not far removed from ordinary public wel-
fare principles, but in the new field of unemployment
compensation there is a different problem. To what extent
should social work techniques and practices be used in this
new field ? If we are cautious in raising this question we
might confine ourselves to the potential problem of ex-
tended benefits. Under what circumstances and through
what agency will extended benefits for the unemployed be
administered? Shall there be a modified needs test and a
policy of continuous investigation? All these questions have
yet to be solved, and they will certainly arise within the
next few years when unemployment compensation takes
hold in this country. This is as yet an uncharted field and
much will depend upon the forces which are dominant in
the crucial years of its development.
T N STEAD of asking ourselves the question, where
A in a program of security the principles and tech-
niques of social work are needed, we might well ask our-
selves, is there in this security program any place where
those principles and techniques are not needed? What is
vocational rehabilitation but a system of individualized
treatment requiring all the skills that would be used upon
a relief case? Have not the placement officers in the em-
ployment service come to realize that there is much more
to the problem of placement than merely asking whether
or not this applicant has the particular skill needed for the
job on hand ? How many failures in industry have been
due to the fact that the right man has been put in the
wrong job? Who could contend that the aged pensioners
in old age retirement will require no individual attention
of any kind?
In each type of program there should be, and I feel sure
that there will be, a pressing demand for specialists who
can practice some of these individualized treatments which
will be necessary. All this should constitute a challenge to
social workers and to the schools of social work. In the
past, the field of operation of social workers has been com-
paratively narrow. Only the most serious aspects of social
pathology have come to their attention. The study of the
more nearly normal of the social processes has not been
available to them. Now there is the possibility of a much
broader gauge approach to the problems of the human
being in his social relations. If social work itself, and the
social workers who have been trained in it, prove capable
of grasping this opportunity, a great contribution to the
cause of social security should result. Certainly the emerg-
ing situation holds a challenge to the whole profession.
THE SURVEY
A Glean Slate for a Fresh Start
By NEWTON D. BAKER
SOMETIMES I wonder if we are not in danger of
allowing our social work to become too traditional.
No social agency ever has all the money it needs ; no
community chest all the money it wants or ought to have ;
and as a consequence there is a tendency to feel that the
fund raised in the chest campaign is a gross sum to be
apportioned among all of the customary and traditional
activities, the enthusiastic advocacy of each of which is
pressed by those constantly engaged with its problems. We
are likely, or at least I personally have feared we are
likely, to allow the traditional avenues of social service
to monopolize our attention and distract it from obliga-
tions and possibilities which reexamination of our social
needs might show us.
One example of this comes immediately to my mind.
The steady growth of colored population in the industrial
cities of the Middle West and the East, and the changing
status of the Negro in the South during the last twenty
years, have created many new problems and intensified old
ones. Most of the large cities in both sections of the coun-
try have special agencies which work with Negroes. Yet it
is my impression that our social services have not been
alert, generally speaking, to the special problems of colored
people, and that a clean slate survey would show many
needs which might well be more important to meet than
some of those which traditionally have concerned us.
Exactly what I mean by a "clean slate survey" is illus-
trated by a study undertaken by the Welfare Federation
of Cleveland, the findings of which are reported in the
mimeographed volume, Between Spires and Stacks. What
makes this study unique is the fact that its starting point
was not the social facilities that a given district had or had
not for its young people, particularly its boys from ten to
nineteen years of age, but the young people themselves —
what they were and what they thought about their lives
as they were living them. It recognized that "however
efficient the coordination of agencies may be ... such co-
ordination is of little value to the individual to be helped
unless there is also coordination at the point of operation —
that is, at the boy himself."
This study sought to discover what the young people
in the area surveyed were interested in, in the light of their
background, and what they themselves believed that they
wanted and needed in life. It sought and it got a "boys'
eye view of life" as it is lived in that community ; it
weighed the influences that played upon youth and the atti-
tudes that these influences engendered. Only secondarily
did it inspect the existing social agencies to see how far
they could respond to the needs of these individuals.
The survey was initiated by Raymond C. Clapp, then
director of the Cleveland Welfare Federation. It was
organized and the report of it was written by Charles
C. Hendry of Chicago, associate professor of sociology
at George William College, and Margaret Svendsen, re-
search psychiatric social worker of the Chicago Institute
for Juvenile Research. A variety of committees and of
expert consultants as well as field workers participated.
After examination of the problem and of the time and
means available it was decided to concentrate the study
upon a single area, a more or less isolated section of the
city bounded on one side by bluffs which ran down to
great steel plants on the river's edge; on the other by a
street, once very important, but now less so, along which
are fourteen churches. The area thus lay between the stacks
of the steel plants and the spires of the churches. It was a
neighborhood generally branded as "tough" and known
to have the highest delinquency rate in the city. Separ-
ated from the rest of Cleveland socially, economically,
linguistically and racially, it was almost a bit sliced out of
eastern Europe and set down in America. The inhabitants
— and there were 15,000 of them — were chiefly Russians
and Poles, 74 percent of them either foreign-born or the
children of foreign-born parents. The men, when they
worked at all, worked in the steel plants; their wives as
cleaners in the office buildings, from early evening until
early morning. The homes had slight parental supervision.
THE workers on the survey took a cross-section of boys
and girls of the community from ten to nineteen
years of age and invited them to come in and talk things
over. Two persons held all the interviews so that the same
technique, the same point of view, the same protection
against boastfulness, or whatever it might be, was present
in all cases. Those boys and girls were encouraged, with
all the expertness of trained interviewers, to talk them-
selves out on all sorts of subjects: their interests, indoors
and out ; what they did with their time ; what they wished
for in terms of occupation, opportunity and circumstances
of living; their attitude toward delinquency of one sorter
another, toward their families, the police, the church, the
YMCA, the settlements and so on. They were led on to
talk of what life meant to them, what they saw in it, now
and in the future, what they would like to have done in
their neighborhood to make it the kind of a place in which
they wanted to live.
Following these interviews the records of every social
agency in Cleveland were searched to discover and to
analyze their contacts with these boys and girls. School
records, church and Sunday records and court records all
were added to the picture. Meantime a portrait of the
neighborhood in which this young life was rooted was
being assembled by means of a great number of interviews
with families, tradesmen, policemen, clergymen, librarians,
teachers, politicians, social workers, magistrates and the
like. All sorts of social and economic statistics were gath-
ered and every aspect of community life — its housing,
newspapers, amusements, gangs, social, fraternal and
religious organizations and so on — was observed and
appraised for its influence on behavior patterns.
I need not go further into the details of the survey. The
report of its findings shows a community of 15,000 people,
about 6000 of them boys and girls, living in an American
city under conditions which are literally terrifying. The
most appalling revelation of the whole inquiry, it seems
to me, was the total absence of character or aspiration
among the young in the neighborhood. Every now and
JANUARY 1937
then an exceptional boy would speak with regret of his
way of life and his lack of opportunity, would show a kind
of aspiration. But such a boy was rare. The girls in that
neighborhood told a devastating story, not only of the
incidents of their daily life but of its lack of hopefulness
for any growth or outlet.
This survey in Cleveland went behind the breastworks
of traditional social service organization, taking a whole
community as it found it, looking at young lives in the
process of growth and examining the dynamic influence
working on them. As the field workers who made the study
pointed out, many of the basic factors which produce the
problems of the community are outside the responsibilities
of social work or beyond the resources likely to be avail-
able for social agencies. But when all the expenditures of
public and private educational, judicial, health, and social
agencies in this area were added up, they made a very sub-
stantial sum. When all the contacts which these agencies
had had with these boys and girls and their families were
examined they showed that the agencies had known a very
high proportion of the individuals. But there had been very
little coordination of agency services. They had failed to
meet many of the problems which the interviews revealed,
and which the methods of social services ought to be able
to reach. If the suggestions made by local leaders and by
the social surveyors are followed, the present investment
might be used much more effectively, although it is obvious
that with only the funds which the Welfare Federation
has to invest in the area, fundamental reconstruction such
as is necessary cannot possibly be accomplished.
The first step following the survey has been to try to
develop elements of strength within the community itself.
The most substantial people who could be found, including
anyone with even an incipient aspiration for a better way
of life for the community, were brought together with the
guidance and assistance of experts. This group is setting
itself to the task of introducing into the community those
elements of wholesome life which now seem totally lost.
It is just as certain as anything can be that the com-
munity that lies between the spires and stacks in Cleveland
would be able to help itself in a thousand ways econo-
mically if it had the character to try, and that what it
needs even more than bread — it manages somehow to get
along on crusts — is self-respect and sturdiness of char-
acter. I feel sure that the present effort in that neighbor-
hood will not be addressed in the first instance to the
procurement of larger economic resources, but will found
itself upon the idea of building self-respect in the young
people of the community. It seems unlikely that the out-
come of these efforts will follow the traditional organiza-
tion lines of social work, although its methods, experience
and techniques will be put to their full usefulness.
Perhaps the future responsibilities of social agencies and
of community chests are to be discovered not by following
traditional lines, but by making every now and then such
a sample test of a particular situation from a new point of
view, finding out how the people themselves, especially
the young people, evaluate the circumstances and oppor-
tunities of their lives. Not infrequently, I suspect, we will
be abashed by the findings of such surveys — we will almost
surely discover that some of our cherished efforts have
gone wide of their mark — but out of them should come a
clear and relatively simple directive for our future under-
takings. For myself I am definitely of the opinion that that
directive will be toward a higher type of living based on
character, in the individual and in the community.
Shall We Amend?
By BEULAH AMIDON
FOLLOWING recent Supreme Court decisions,
notably the ruling which threw out the New York
minimum wage law, the question of amending the
Constitution to clear the way for social legislation has been
widely discussed. The discussion has now gone beyond the
point of theory and argument. Various individuals and
groups are definitely formulating suggested new sections
of the Constitution. There is every reason to expect that
a number of these proposed amendments will be intro-
duced and debated in this session of Congress. This brief
statement attempts only to summarize suggestions for con-
stitutional change, without going into proposals to clear
the way for social legislation by changes in the Judiciary
Act to enlarge the Supreme Court ; to require a unanimous
vote of the court to invalidate a law ; to permit Congress to
override a court decision by a two thirds vote of both
houses; or to deprive the court of the right to review
federal legislation.
Article V of the Constitution provides that change or
addition to the basic law of the land must be passed by a
two thirds vote of both Houses and ratified by the legisla-
tures or by special conventions in three fourths of the
states. How slow and laborious this procedure may prove
is shown by the history of the child labor amendment
which, enacted in 1924 with the backing of both major
political parties, still has "twelve states to go" before rati-
fication is complete. On the other hand, prohibition was
ratified in twenty-five months; repeal, in eleven.
At this writing, there are, broadly, five types of amend-
ment under discussion. The simplest, perhaps, is an article
granting Congress power to deal with a specific subject,
such as the regulation of hours or of wages. But it must
be borne in mind that this is a permissive amendment. It
simply confers on Congress the power to enact legislation ;
it does not regulate or control.
A second type of proposed amendment would modify
the process of changing the Constitution, seeking to make
it more flexible by providing for ratification by populai
vote.
A third type of proposal is modeled on the "convict
labor" law, which would forbid the passage across state
borders of goods manufactured under conditions specified
as substandard. But while this form of regulation is rela-
tively simple when applied to the products of convict labor,
THE SURVEY
which can be checked at their source, it brings up almost
insuperable administrative difficulties as a method of set-
ting and maintaining labor standards.
Most widely discussed are two very different proposals:
one, to open the door to social legislation by a broad grant
of general powers to Congress ; the other, to protect social
legislation by redefining and limiting the application of
the two sections of the Constitution most frequently cited
by the Supreme Court in declaring such measures invalid
— the "commerce clause," and the "due process" clause.
Discussion of the first of these two forms of amendment
usually centers around the proposal put forward by Dean
Lloyd Garrison of the University of Wisconsin Law
School, writing in The New Republic and in the Tulane
Law Review last winter. A revised draft of the amend-
ment suggested by Dean Garrison reads:
1. Congress shall have power to promote the economic
welfare of the United States by such laws as in its judgment
are appropriate for that purpose. Congress shall, so far as
practical, enact such laws in the form of a general frame-
work to be filled in by state legislation and to be admin-
istered in whole or in part by state agencies, subject to such
standards as Congress may provide.
2. Existing state powers are not affected by this Article
except as Congress may declare particular state laws or
classes of laws to be suspended by the operation of laws
enacted by Congress under this Article.
3. When applied to economic regulations enacted by the
states or by Congress, the term "due process of law" as used
in this Constitution shall be deemed to relate to procedural
matters only.
Dean Garrison has commented on this formulation :
"I. The second sentence of the first paragraph, while
leaving a necessary discretion in Congress, is designed to
assure as far as possible decentralization of function and
the adaptability of national policy to local conditions. While
Congress would not be bound to act under this sentence,
I think that the state-mindedness of Congressmen would
assure action under it in most instances, especially in view
of the clear intent of the amendment.
"2. Instead of leaving to the courts to decide when a
particular state law so conflicts with an act of Congress
as to be suspended by the latter, I think it would probably
be wiser to require Congress to make the determination ;
hence the second paragraph.
"3. . . . the third paragraph . . . restores to the due
process its original historical meaning, but only as applied
to economic matters, leaving its larger content in effect as
applied to other types of statutes."
Critics of this type of amendment fear that it would
open the door not only to social legislation, but also to
legislation infringing civil liberties.
At the annual meeting of the National Consumers'
League last month, Dean Charles E. Clark of the Yale
Law School offered a tentative draft of an amendment
"framed in terms of defining interstate commerce more
broadly, of restricting due process of law to procedural
matters, and of extending the First Amendment to state
action" :
Section 1. Commerce among the several states includes
the production, manufacture or distribution of industrial or
agricultural commodities which are destined to be or have
been transported from one state to another, or compete with
commodities which are destined to be or have been so
transported.
Section 2. Due process of law shall have reference only
to the procedure of executive, administrative, or judicial
bodies charged with the execution and enforcement of the law.
Section 3. The provision of Article 1, in addition to an
amendment of this Constitution, shall apply to and govern
the actions of the several states as well as of Congress.
Since July, a national committee, with W. Jett Lauck,
Washington economist, as secretary and Morris Ernst,
New York lawyer, as treasurer has been quietly studying
questions raised by recent Supreme Court decisions on so-
cial legislation. This committee plans to call a conference
in Washington early in February, at which all interested
groups including the American Federation of Labor and
the farm organizations will be represented, to formulate
an amendment and plan an educational campaign in its
favor. The meeting, the committee hopes, will provide an
avenue of effort for all Americans in agreement with Prof.
Robert E. Cushman of Cornell who said, at the Con-
sumers' League meeting, "I believe that the Constitution
should be adequately amended to place beyond all doubt,
and beyond the reach of all judicial restriction the power
of state and nation to deal with intelligent thoroughness
with the pressing social problems of the present day."
One of the Many
By LOUISE SHERWOOD
Still I can see her, and always
Her words ring in my ears.
There in her tenement kitchen she stood
In her dirty brown dress, her hands powdered white,
For she had been making pasta from charity flour.
The wash on a line in the corner,
The stove, and the sink full of dishes
Made a meaningless pattern behind her.
Pattern of ugliness. Even the sunlight
Which slipped through the window, scattered in bars
By the beams of the "El," could only look pale.
— Did she remember the sunlight, golden and burning
Which ripened the grapes in the vineyards,
Warming the translucent fruit, releasing its perfume? —
"My husban' no work for three years.
How do we live then, when he earn nothing?
He go for the city sometimes, three days a week,
But my boys are still hungry.
Then I go to work. I sew dresses like these.
Sixty-five cents for a dozen. All week I sew,
And I earn maybe two dollar, maybe two-fifty.
My husban', he say I better stay home.
My boys need me here, and the house gets too dirty."
She paused, and I murmured the commonplace things, and
thought
Of the fur on ray coat, and the Wedgwood bowl on my table.
Then, as if sharing my thought, she continued:
"God put some people up high, some people down low.
Me He put down low. I can do nothing."
Silent, though longing for words, I went out through the
doorway,
And, silently, down the long stairs to the noise of the street.
JANUARY 1937
A Program for Pennsylvania
A SWEEPING reorganization and consolidation
of all forms of public assistance in Pennsylvania,
reaching down through a new state department
of assistance into every county of the state, has been recom-
mended to Gov. George H. Earle by the Pennsylvania
Committee on Public Assistance and Relief. This com-
mittee was appointed by the governor in December 1935,
after five years of depression experience had focused pub-
lic attention on the fact that "complexity, inadequacy and
contradictions were the outstanding features of Pennsyl-
vania's assistance machinery." The committee, headed by
Herbert L. Goodrich, dean of the law school of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, its twenty-four members widely
representative, was charged with studying "the entire
question with a view to substituting for the present chaotic
condition an efficient state-wide system providing a realistic
approach to this greatest of all present day problems."
As its secretary it had Kenneth L. M. Pray, on leave from
the Pennsylvania School of Social Work. Several reports,
dealing with the relief situation and the State Emergency
Relief Board, were made during the spring and summer
when the state was undergoing recurring relief crises.
As this is written only a summary of the full report
proposing drastic reorganization has been made public.
The full report, supported by the findings of a technical
staff, goes to Governor Earle within whose discretion it lies
to embody all or any part of the recommendations in his
legislative program.
The committee, popularly known as the Goodrich com-
mittee, offers a seven point program covering the future
need for public assistance, a unified program, state organ-
ization and administration, local organization and adminis-
tration, financial problems, coverage of assistance and the
merit system. Its major recommendations propose:
That the state finance all forms of public assistance, except
institutional care, by budgeted appropriations.
That the state's 425 county, district and borough poor
boards be abolished, together with the fifty-nine county
mothers' assistance fund boards which also administer old
age assistance and blind pensions, eight additional old age and
blind pension boards, and thirty-four county and area emer-
gency relief boards.
That supervision of all public assistance be vested in a
secretary of the department of assistance, in accordance with
policies and standards governing relief approved by a state
board of assistance of nine, appointed by the governor.
That assistance and relief be administered locally under the
direction of county boards of assistance, composed of both
men and women, to be nominated by the department of assist-
ance and elected by the county commissioners.
That all officers and employes in the department of assist-
ance, other than those in policy-determining positions, and
all officers and employes under all the proposed county boards
of assistance be placed under the merit system.
It is urged that the proposed reorganization, affecting
to some degree approximately 1,500,000 persons now re-
ceiving public assistance under one or more of the various
types of relief administered in the state, be initiated as
soon as the necessary legislation has been enacted, and
that the new system be installed throughout the state on
or before January 1, 1938. As pertinent to the necessity
for reorganization it is pointed out that in the month of
September 1936 a total of $23,182,242 was spent in the
state on public assistance in eight different categories ex-
clusive of almshouse care. In each county there were —
and still are — nine distinct types of public assistance ad-
ministered by at least five independent organizations which
are in turn supervised by four state-wide organizations.
Further recommendations of the committee provide for
amendments to the Mothers' Assistance Fund Act to assure
aid to dependent children under sixteen living in the
homes of relatives, as well as those living with widowed
mothers, and to the Old Age Assistance Fund Act, chang-
ing the age of eligibility from seventy to sixty-five years.
In both cases the extension of coverage is urged to take
advantage of the federal Social Security Act.
IN order to eliminate the two-century-old poor board sys-
tem which has long been a stumbling block for modern
progressive methods, it is proposed that all forms of as-
sistance of needy persons in their homes be financed by the
state through budgeted appropriations, while the adminis-
tration of county almshouses, hospitals and other institu-
tions now a responsibility of the local poor boards, be
transferred to the county commissioners. The Goodrich
committee indicates its belief that this step would relieve
real estate of approximately $10 million annually in taxes
levied by the poor boards for direct home relief.
In formulating its recommendations the committee kept
an eye on the public that must receive relief and the public
that must pay the bill. It discusses the advantages in the
fundamental changes it proposes and sums them up:
Substitution for the present archaic system with its tangle
of overlapping boards, of a state-wide system, supervised by
the state, but with local administrative control.
Definite economies in operation as a result of uniform
auditing, consolidation of offices, and elimination of duplica-
tion in case work.
Assurance of efficient personnel through the adoption of
the merit system in the selection, assignment and promotion
of such personnel.
Relief to real estate through the abolition of the poor
boards and the financing through indirect taxation by the
state of all assistance to individuals or families in their homes.
Uniformity in the distribution of relief to those in need,
by centralizing in each community the administration of vari-
ous categories of relief, such as mothers' assistance, old age
and blind assistance, unemployment and general relief.
Making possible uniform and complete statistical records
of those receiving relief in order that precise information will
be available at all times for intelligent planning and action.
Enabling the State of Pennsylvania to enjoy to the fullest
extent grants-in-aid made available by compliance with the
requirements of the federal Social Security Act.
Progressive social forces in Pennsylvania which have
long struggled against the state's outmoded system and
have battled vigorously in the legislature for its reform,
have welcomed the clean slate approach represented by
the studies of the Goodrich committee and are preparing
to launch a state-wide educational campaign to support
legislation embodying its recommendations. Special com-
mittees, notably of the Public Charities Association, of
10
THE SURVEY
the State Conference of Social Welfare and of councils
of social agencies in Philadelphia and elsewhere, are al-
ready at work expressing in action their endorsement of
the committee's own expressed belief that :
It has charted a way for Pennsylvania which, if enacted
into law, may serve as an example to the rest of the nation.
It believes that almost any group of responsible citizens of
the state, confronted with the same factual information,
would propose substantially the same program. It is con-
fident that the people of Pennsylvania will see it as a truly
American approach to the whole problem.
Group Workers Organize
PROPOSALS for an organization of group workers
for the study of social group work, forecast by con-
ferences at Atlantic City last May and developed
by a committee appointed at that time, have crystallized
into definite form. The central purpose of the new organ-
ization, the National Association for the Study of Group
Work (the ASGW to its intimates) is to bring group
workers into voluntary association for study and mutual
stimulation. Its members will be known as Associates.
It will operate through a coordinating committee of a
hundred associates, broadly representative of types of
agencies and activities in all sections of the country, and
through an executive committee of ten. Annual member-
ships are $3, sustaining memberships $5. The executive
committee, which had its mandate at Atlantic City to
develop the organization and to serve until the next con-
ference at Indianapolis, includes Charles E. Hendry,
Chicago, chairman ; Grace L. Coyle, Cleveland ; Frank J.
Skalak, Pittsburgh; Ruth Perkins, Boston; Roy Sorenson,
Chicago; Neva R. Deardorff, Helen Hall, Clara A.
Kaiser, Joshua Lieberman and Arthur L. Swift, New
York.
During the last few years evidence has accumulated
pointing to the emergence of a general consciousness of
social group work as a function common to a large number
of different agencies, institutions and programs. There
has been a steady growth of collaboration and cooperation
among groups representing a variety of related agencies
through such bodies as the New York Conference on
Group Work, and group work councils in various coun-
cils of social agencies. Institutes, seminars, training pro-
grams and conferences in this field have increased in
number and significance. Emergency government programs
have created opportunities and occasions for interagency
planning by the group approach. The inclusion, two years
ago, of the section on social group work within the
National Conference of Social Work symbolized, in a way,
the whole development, a fresh movement, coming up from
the bottom, for joint study and planning on a horizontal
interagency basis.
When this section was formed it was thought that it
would meet, for a time at least, the needs of the situation.
But at the Atlantic City conference it became apparent
that the vigor of the movement required organizational
machinery to carry forward continuous year-round ex-
change of experience in the field of group work. The whole
situation was discussed at a meeting of some forty leading
spirits and a coordinating committee headed by Mr.
Hendry was delegated to form a plan. The new associa-
tion is the result of that committee's deliberations. The
direction of its activity, its charter so to speak, has been
formulated along the lines of the Atlantic City discussion
which indicated that the organization purposes should be:
To encourage the creation, continuance, and development
of local voluntary study groups, seminars or conferences on
group work.
To help such local groups relate their separate programs
of inquiry and discussion to certain central problems, thereby
making possible the pooling of findings and convergence to-
ward a common goal.
To locate significant practice in group work, to get it
carefully described and to reproduce selected descriptions for
circulation and study.
To publish an information service, possibly a quarterly re-
view, devoted to descriptions and discussions of group work.
To prepare bibliographies of current literature on group
work, arrange for reprint service on articles written for a
particular agency but that have a basic reference to the func-
tion of group work regardless of agency, and to develop and
maintain a current inventory of experimental projects re-
lated to selected problems in group work.
To arrange for an annual conference prior to or in con-
junction with the National Conference of Social Work for
the purpose of dealing with matters growing out of the
studies and inquiries of local units during the year.
The problems or areas foreseen at the Atlantic City
meeting as the focus of fruitful local group discussion dur-
ing the organization period, and which the executive com-
mittee endorses are:
Further clarification and refinement of the objectives and
standards of group work.
Critical examination of practice in relation to the selection,
training and supervision of voluntary group leaders.
Exploration into the development and use of group records.
In the matter of records it should be noted that the
U. S. Children's Bureau has added group work to its pro-
gram of social reporting, thus demonstrating its confidence
in the disposition and the capacity of group work agencies
for sustained and basic collaboration.
The executive committee of the new association, "con-
vinced of the timeliness, if not the urgency of this enter-
prise, and confident that group workers will find genuine
professional satisfaction in relating themselves to it," urges
that each member of the coordinating committee take per-
sonal and professional responsibility for encouraging small
groups of persons to discuss, on a professional level, at
least one of the problems selected for intensive exploration,
and to cooperate in the collection and dissemination of in-
formation relative to the important thinking and practice
in the field. It invites group workers throughout the
country "to share in this adventure in professional dis-
covery." Inquiries should be addressed to Charles E.
Hendry, George William College, 5315 Drexel Avenue,
Chicago, or to Neva R. Deardorff, Welfare Council, 44
East 23 Street, New York.
JANUARY 1937
11
BEHAVIOR AS IT IS BEHAVED- III
He Knew What He Wanted
By ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE
H1
fE is the most mannerly, affec-
tionate, and good-natured of
all my children; and the most
stubborn! The others storm and fuss,
but finally give in. Jim never storms.
Never fusses. But he never gives in —
about anything."
It was not a new grievance. Jim Bor-
den's mother wailed this way to her
brother with every notice from the dean
that if Jim did not stop cutting classes,
he would be dropped from the course.
"Here he comes now," she went on.
"You watch. You'll see what I mean."
Jim opened the screen door, and started
upstairs on the run.
"Jim," called his mother. The boy
obediently ran back and stood in the
doorway, an odd figure with soiled
trousers torn at the knees, shirt open
to his waist, and a smudge of black
across his cheek.
"Hello," he said abstractedly.
"Jim! You've been cutting classes
again." Mrs. Borden reproachfully
waved the dean's letter.
"Yeah. That's right," her son agreed.
"I couldn't get to class this week." He
shifted uneasily and Mrs. Borden turn-
ed with a sigh to her brother.
"You see? What can I do with a boy
like that? He's even cutting his drama
classes — the subject he's crazy about."
"But mother," the boy explained
earnestly, "that course is supposed to be
about writing a drama. Well, I've writ-
ten a drama. They wouldn't let me give
it for the class because they said they
didn't have time. So I had to give it
at St. Angela's where they will let me.
I'm doing what the course was supposed
to teach me. I'm writing and producing
a play. So where's the kick coming?"
"It's coming from the dean," answer-
ed his mother sharply. "Your play may
be good. But that's not the point. You're
cutting classes to do something that no
one wants you to do but yourself, and
DRIVE TO CREATE BEAUTY
HAVE you ever observed anyone driven out of his customary behavior by
an urge to create what seemed to him beautiful? Have you ever ex-
perienced it yourself?
Have you observed it more often in children or in adults? In natives of
the United States, or of o'.her countries? In the educated or uneducated?
Is this drive affected by the social valuation of art objects? Is its strength
irrespective of the value of the thing created? Is the drive to create beauty the
same as to appreciate the creations of others?
If you yourself have felt this urge can you describe it? Does it consist of
an inability to focus the attention on anything but the proposed object? Of
acute discomfort if prevented from creating it? Is it obsessive like a tune
running in the head? Falling in love? A desire to smoke or drink or eat? A
desire for athletio exercise?
Do people who have not felt this urge, tend to discount it in those who
have? Have you ever observed any unfortunate results when this urge was
thwarted? Have you observed a comparable urge in animals? Or do you
consider it a distinctively human trait? From an evolutionary standpoint, what
do you consider the survival value, if any, of this drive to create beauty? Is it
an individual or a social value, or both?
SUGGESTED READING:
COLEMAN R. GRIFFITH: INTRODUCTION TO APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY, Chapters 34-35. Sources
of Esthetic Creation.
ROBERT WOODWORTH: DYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY. Chapter 6. Originality.
HOOVER COMMISSION ON RECENT SOCIAL TRENDS (Keppel). The Art. in Social
Life.
HUGO MUNSTERBERG: THE PRINCIPLES OF ART EDUCATION.
JOHN L. LOWES: THE ROAD TO XANADU.
that won't count on your credits. You're
already behind. And unless you stop cut-
ting classes you can't graduate with
your class — or with any class for that
matter. Why not get your degree first
and then produce your play?"
"Because it has to be given now,"
said Jim patiently. "It's an Easter trope.
If I wait until I graduate, it won't be
Easter." He was balancing himself im-
patiently on the first stair step. "If
you'll excuse me," he murmured, "I
have to get back. The set isn't finished.''
He disappeared up the stairs, was down
again in a moment with a folder of
drawings, and escaped across the yard
at a dog trot.
'There you are. That's the explana-
tion. It's an Easter trope. So it must
be given at Easter. That's reason enough
for Jim. What are his courses, his
credits, his degree, compared to a
trope?"
"What on earth is a trope?" growled
her brother mystified.
"It's some kind of play that drives
everyone stark mad. That's what it is,"
Jim's mother burst out with an exasper-
ated shrug. "If it were only a Labor
Day trope, Jim might get his degree.
But it's Easter!"
Jim did not return either to supper
or to bed. At midnight his mother dis-
tractedly telephoned St. Angela's parish
house.
"Yes. Jim Borden is here," answered
a voice. "He's working on the set. He
says not to wait up for him. He'll be
home pretty soon."
"Pretty soon. That means maybe for
breakfast and maybe not," sighed his
mother, starting off to bed. Her brother
had waited until after dinner to give
Jim a little advice, but lacking Jim's
reappearance had gone home with, "I
suppose he knew he'd get a scolding, so
he just didn't show up."
"Oh, no," Jim's mother knew better
than that. "He wouldn't stay away on
that account. He has just forgotten
your existence. He is lost to all the
world but his precious trope. He isn't
dodging you and he wouldn't mind your
scolding. He probably would smile
politely all through it, and not listen to
a word you said. He wouldn't resent it,
because he wouldn't hear it."
At eleven the next morning, Jim ap-
peared at the kitchen door. His mother,
beside the stove, greeted him first with
12
THE SURVEY
relief, then with outspoken dismay.
"Jim! What on earth has happened
to you?" she gasped, shocked at her son's
sorry appearance. He had been untidy
enough when she saw him last. Now he
was a scarecrow. His hair was matted
with dust and sweat. Dark rings circled
his eyes and haggard lines furrowed his
face. His socks fell over his shoes, their
tops held together with bits of twine.
He looked as if he had lost ten pounds.
"Have you had an accident? Are you
hurt?"
"No. Just working." Jim's tone was
conciliatory.
"Working! All night?"
"Yeah. Got any coffee handy?"
Without a word his mother lighted
the gas under the coffee pot.
"Oh, Mom. Don't take it so hard."
The boy slid into a chair and reached
for the bread box. "A snack will fix me
up."
"You're cutting all your classes to-
day," his mother protested, almost in
tears.
"I couldn't keep awake in any class
today, even if I went. So it's no use
to go."
'Then why didn't you get some sleep
last night so that you could keep
awake?" insisted his mother. "You
know that your work should come first."
"I was working, Mom," explained
Jim patiently. "But it took till midnight
to get those arches up. And then they
weren't right. So I stayed and changed
'em. They look swell now."
"You stayed there alone?" gasped his
mother, "when you were so tired? You
might have fallen and broken your
neck."
"That's right," agreed Jim between
mouthfuls. "But I didn't. So it's O.K."
"What about those arches was worth
risking your neck for, as well as your
degree?"
"I had to point them up. They were
out of line with the roof." Jim got out
of his chair and edged toward the door.
"Where are you going now?" Mrs.
Borden was thoroughly aroused. "You
come right back here and get into a
tub and go to bed."
"All right, Mom, I will; honest I
will in just a little bit. But now that the
arches are changed, the lighting has to
be too. The electrician is waiting." Jim
backed out the door, leaped the steps,
hopped into the electrician's waiting car,
and was off for his twenty-sixth con-
secutive hour at St. Angela's parish
house.
He was not fast enough however to
escape the eyes of two passersby, the
teacher whose class he had just cut,
and the dean. The two men paused to
watch the car, with Jim in his rags
and tatters, careen around the corner
JANUARY 1937
and dash off in a direction away from
the campus.
"He hasn't been in my class for the
entire week," the professor observed.
"He hasn't been in anyone's class,"
added the dean grimly, "and if this
keeps up he won't be even if he tries."
"That won't upset him in the least,"
the professor too was grim. "Since he
claims that the drama is all that inter-
ests him, you might think that he'd have
some interest in a drama class. But he
can't be bothered."
"He tells me that he is producing a
play of his own, and that it takes all
his time," remarked the dean.
"Yes. That's what I hear too."
The professor was not impressed. "He
certainly has no time for me. And it's
clear that he prefers his own works to
the classics. Not that the fellow hasn't
some talent," he admitted, "But no one
can get a degree just on talent."
"No," sighed the dean. "Of course
not. But it's too bad. I rather like the
boy. And I hate to see him making
a failure of himself. He might amount
to something if he'd only work."
This is the third of the sketches
described by the author in her introduc-
tion to the series as "life occurrences
•without labels." [See THE SURVEY,
November 1936, page 333.] The fourth,
G oldie and Grade '. The Urge to Sex
Expression, will appear in February.
Mrs. Wembridge requests that inquiries
about additional material (of which
there have been many) be made directly
to her at 10469 Lindbrook Drive, West
Los Angeles, Calif. She asks us to say
that these sketches are taken from the
manuscript of a book not yet published.
The selection of the sketches for SUR-
VEY publication, their order and ar-
rangement are by the editors.
BROWN MEMORIAL BUILDING FOR SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION
FEW toilers in the frugal fields of social work see their dreams reach such
rich materialization as these Gothic halls, bestowed on the George Warren
Brown Department of Social Work, Washington University, St. Louis, by the
late Mr. and Mrs. Brown, for whom the department is named. The new
building, dedicated this month, is one of the first university buildings to be
erected particularly for the uses of education for social work. Frank J. Bruno,
1933 president of the National Conference of Social Work, is director of the
department, in which around a hundred full time students of social work are
enrolled.
Since 1908, when the old School of Social Economy was opened, St. Louis
has offered some opportunity for education in social work. Both the earlier
school and the present one owe much to the initiative of the St. Louis Provident
Association. The present school received its impetus in 1924 when a city
advisory committee, acting on a survey of the entire local field made by
Francis H. MacLean of the Family Welfare Association of America, stimulated
a modernization and "revival" of St. Louis social work.
With the formation of the Community Council at about this time, and the
growth of professional consciousness, enrollment in the new school increased
steadily; but money did not. In 1928, just when it was doubtful whether the
school would be continued, a bequest from George Warren Brown established
a trust fund for the school. A later bequest from Mrs. Brown made possible
the new building and doubled the original endowment to support the school.
13
The Common Welfare
Relief Riddle
WHATEVER the other issues before the incoming
Congress, none is more complicated and challeng-
ing than "this business of relief." For the relief rolls
have failed to answer to the processes of recovery and it
becomes increasingly apparent that only by a firm, long
range policy on the entire problem of unemployment and
relief can a solution be approached. Whether the Presi-
dent himself holds that view probably will not be known
until he addresses Congress on the subject. Meantime he
is under strong conflicting pressures: by business and in-
dustrial leaders who hold that work relief is retarding re-
covery and creating a labor shortage, and that "the way
to end relief is to end it" ; and by social workers and other
qualified observers, some of them in his own official fam-
ily, who hold that unemployment and its complement, re-
lief, are inevitable sequellae of the cyclical fluctuations of
business and that they must be treated through a perma-
nent far reaching policy and program. Along with these
two major pressures are a welter of others. "Vested inter-
ests," Louis Stark of the New York Times calls them — the
"vested interest" of communities in holding down local
tax levies, the "vested interest" of low grade employers
in keeping wages down, of trade unions in keeping wage
rates up, of alliances and unions of project workers in
"continuity of employment," of politicians in favors to dis-
pense, of taxpayers in the mounting bill. All have a stake
in "this business of relief."
Much of the confusion stems from the early period of
federal relief when "old poor" and new unemployed were
lumped together in one mass relief operation. The rough
and ready classification of employables and unemploy-
ables by WPA a year ago did not help. No one knows
now just where employability begins or ends, either in
WPA or direct relief rolls. Neither the one nor the
other is a guarantee of anything. Employers sheer away
from them both. Promising theories on reemployment
have broken down before realities.
Relief, as Congress and the President face their re-
sponsibilities, is not simple. In it are interwoven basic
factors of economics and national finance. But in it, too,
behind the statistics, back of the indices, are human be-
ings, thousands of them, caught in the stream of events,
inarticulate in the face of "vested interests," who look to
Washington for measures which will comprehend and
deal with their uncertainty and helplessness.
The depression is over. Unemployment and relief re-
main to challenge the best statesmanship of the country.
A policy based on the undeniable facts of continuing
human need, that would face all the issues involved and
deal with them firmly and courageously, would be a ma-
jor accomplishment of this or any other administration.
War on Cancer
/^•ARRYING the symbol of the drawn sword, women
^^ of America in coming months will mobilize against
a bitter foe. "Early cancer is curable. Fight it with
14
knowledge," is the watch-cry as the Women's Field Army,
planned by the American Society for the Control of Can-
cer, opens a country-wide enlistment. Careful prelim-
inary organization has been carried on with the coopera-
tion of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, which
has furnished most of the "officers" — vice-commanders,
captains and lieutenants — for this militant movement.
Since 1913, the society has directed its efforts toward
the collection and dissemination of information on cancer,
its cure and its prevention. Now, explains Dr. C. C.
Little, managing director, requests from medical men
throughout the country have pointed the way to the next
step. These doctors say: "We are prepared to diagnose
and treat cancer, but patients in most cases still come to
us only after the disease has spread through the body and
is beyond help. Can't you teach them to seek medical help
when the danger signals first appear?"
It is this challenge which the Women's Field Army
is organized to answer. For weapons the members pro-
pose to use sound, conservative facts on cancer, ap-
proved by competent medical authorities. Educational
work will be carried on under the direction of cancer
committees of state medical societies.
Despite its picturesque dress parade, the field army is
organized for a long, unremitting fight. Its organizers
know that it will require endless patience, courage and
persistence. But the stakes are high. Nearly 140,000 die
yearly in the United States of cancer. That approximately
40,000 of these could be saved is the belief of those be-
hind the campaign of the Women's Field Army.
Campus Drama
TWO great university campuses are at present in the
throes of controversy. Yale has "the case of Jerome
Davis" ; the University of Wisconsin, a storm over the
question of reappointing President Glenn Frank.
Last spring Professor Davis was notified that he would
not be reelected to the chair of practical philanthropy in
the Divinity School which he has held for twelve years.
The American Association of University Professors has
directed a committee to investigate whether or not his
dismissal is due, as Professor Davis charges, to his politi-
cal and economic views. Four members of the association
— Charles A. Beard, historian, Professors Paul H. Doug-
las, Chicago, Edward A. Ross, Wisconsin, Colston E.
Warne, Amherst — in a preliminary study concluded that:
The circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Dr. Davis
present positive elements involving academic liberties, the
rights of the scholar as citizen, and the correct procedure of
the university authorities in dealing with such liberties and
rights.
At Wisconsin, the question of academic freedom is not
involved. Last February the regents of the university in-
formed President Frank that he probably would not be
reappointed at the end of his present term, July 1, 1937.
A majority of the present Board of Regents are appointees
of Governor Philip LaFollette, though the board has not
THE SURVEY
divided on this line. Governor LaFollette is a champion
of the Roosevelt administration, and has been mentioned
as a possible Democratic nominee in 1940. Glenn Frank
is a Republican, a Roosevelt critic, and is considered to
have presidential aspirations of his own. His friends hold
that the plan of the regents to remove him from office is
a flagrant case of "political interference with the affairs
of the university." Those regents who oppose reappoint-
ment hold that dissatisfaction with the Frank administra-
tion goes back at least five years, and is based solely on
President Frank's failures as an administrator. According
to written charges filed with the board by its head,
Harold M. Wilkie, President Frank has been indecisive
and unbusinesslike, has lost the confidence of his faculty,
the regents and the state legislators, has let his outside
interests interfere with his university duties, has main-
tained his home extravagantly out of public funds.
The next stage in the Wisconsin drama will be a public
hearing, at which his critics, his defenders, and President
Frank himself will be heard. Meantime, there is a strong
move afoot in Wisconsin to change the method of appoint-
ing the university regents (now chosen by the governor)
so that the university, at this point, may be divorced from
politics in fact and in spirit.
Ruffled Waters
|"N part as a protest against "official policies of the
-•• nationally organized groups of lawyers in this coun-
try" and in part as an effort to make the bar "a truly
progressive force in the life of the nation" comes the new
National Lawyers Guild, initiated by such legal lights as
Frank P. Walsh, the temporary president, Morris L.
Ernst, Jerome N. Frank, Prof. Karl N. Llewellyn,
Henry T. Hunt, Charlton Ogburn and others.
The new guild, which expects several thousand law-
yers at its first annual meeting in Washington next
month, disclaims any competition with the National Bar
Association. It proposes however to supply the means
through which "the overwhelming majority of Ameri-
can lawyers, now inarticulate, will sound their collective
voice"; particularly, says Mr. Walsh, when they are not
in agreement with those groups of lawyers who "have
taken hostile stands to proposals and legislation of a
forward looking character ... for example such issues
as reasonable business regulation, social security, labor
legislation and child labor."
About the time the new guild was ruffling the legal
waters another stone was dropped into the same pool by
Harrison Tweed, new president of the New York Legal
Aid Society, who, at a dinner to the retiring president, Al-
len Wardwell, warned his lawyer colleagues that unless
they see to it that poor men get justice the bar faces some
kind of socialization of the practice of law.
In another legal pool the radio "good will court" found
itself completely sunk. In this program ex-judges gave
informal counsel to inquirers identified only by number.
It seemed pretty innocuous not to say ineffective to lay
listeners, but it drew the fire of the committee on pro-
fessional ethics of the American Bar Association and of a
whole phalanx of New York associations, city and county.
These organizations filed a memorandum with the appel-
late division of the Supreme Court which, in a ruling,
forbade attorneys to give legal advice "in connection with
a publicity medium of any kind." The commercial sponsor
of the program promptly dropped the "good will court"
and listeners are no longer regaled by hearing radio-
struck "litigants" tell their troubles.
Industry Steps Forward
A CODE pledging industry's cooperation with govern-
ment in the national interest and including in prin-
ciple some of the most important New Deal reforms was
adopted by the National Association of Manufacturers,
meeting in annual convention in New York last month.
The preamble declares: "Better living, better housing,
more of the necessities, comforts and luxuries of life,
steadier work, more certainty of a job, more security for
old age — these are the natural desires of every human
being. They are the progressive objects of American in-
dustry." To this end, "Industry pledges its cooperation
with government in the promotion of economic and social
progress." The code expresses approval of the social se-
curity principle, doubt of the complete effectiveness of
the present Social Security Act, and promises cooperation
"in every practicable way toward making it effective";
it recognizes the right of labor to organize and bargain
collectively; and denounces child labor, sweatshops, stock
market speculation. The new code gives eloquent ex-
pression to the liberal point of view put forward in re-
cent months by such men as Edward A. Filene, Boston
merchant. [See Survey Graphic, January 1937, page 16.]
In the same week the manufacturers met, the Council
for Industrial Progress, organized after the collapse of
NRA, gathered in Washington under the chairmanship of
George L. Berry, coordinator for industrial cooperation,
to draw up "a new basis for cooperation between govern-
ment and industry." The program, as worked out by the
council, calls for a revised NRA favorable to "the little
man," amendments strengthening the anti-trust laws, and
a system of loans guaranteed by the government for the
benefit of small businesses, modeled on the loans to home
owners under the Federal Housing Act. Responsibility
for embodying this program in legislative recommenda-
tions was left to a special committee.
And So On . . .
MILITARISM reared its ugly head in a New York
CCC camp when at the wedding of an "alumnus"
the whole corps, after the manner of the army and navy,
made a triumphal arch for the bride and groom, lifting
high not swords, but shining picks and shovels. • • "A
score of [Pennsylvania] poor directors," says the Johns-
town Democrat, "left their annual state convention . . .
in protest over U. S. Representative Francis E. Walter's
prediction that the federal social security program would
'end the poorhouse. ' ' • • Her name is Ethel Smith —
the "unknown" of the Social Security Board's informa-
tional service, who sat up all one night to write the
folder, Security in Your Old Age, which accompanied
the millions of application blanks for old age benefits. It
began, "There is now a law in this country which will
give about 26 million working people something to live
on when they are old and have stopped working." The
New Yorker called that opening sentence "something of a
government record for simple, good English . . . carry-
ing the faint, troubling vibrations of great prose." Ethel
Smith got national coverage, if not a by-line.
JANUARY 1937
15
The Social Front
WPA
DEDUCTIONS in Works Progress
Administration employment, vari-
ously described as a "combing out," a
"purge" and a "shambles," which were
front page news much of last month,
have directed public attention sharply
to the fact that WPA is still an emer-
gency enterprise subject to emergency
conditions. For WPA employes, the
shakeup served to dispel any sense of
security they might have rationalized
themselves into. Washington officials
explained the action in dollars and
cents: there simply was not enough
money to go around; since reduction
was a hard necessity, common sense
dictated that it should be on the basis
of need, with the rolls reexamined to
determine those whose status had
changed since their original assign-
ment to WPA. Apparently the proced-
ure in many places for this reexamina-
tion was dismissal, with reapplication
for relief followed by investigation and
reinstatement if need was established.
Against the statement of lack of
funds the WPA workers and their sym-
pathizers, of whom there were many,
reminded official Washington of its
promise that "no one should starve"
and challenged the public policy of a
mid-winter contraction of the WPA
program while private employment was
admittedly inadequate to pick up the
load. Naturally the efforts at reduc-
tion met with protests. In many large
cities there was much organized picket-
ing and a rash of strikes of the newer
varieties — sit-down, sit-in, sit-out, even
lie-down.
It is difficult to estimate how effective
the protests were. The "stop firing"
order was said to have been given by
President Roosevelt on his return from
South America in mid-December, but
no official word was made public. Some
observers say that the desired reduc-
tion had been accomplished before the
fireworks broke loose and that rein-
statements to the WPA payroll, claimed
as a victory by protestants, represent
only a normal "trading margin." Others
say that most of the "purge" consisted
of transfers of drought relief workers
to the Resettlement Administration and
the dropping of non-relief employes, and
that the final returns will show that not
more than 2 or 3 percent of relief status
cases were actually "combed out."
Such figures as are available at this
writing show that WPA employment
dropped from 2,515,827 on October 15
to 2,383,332 on December 5.
As matters stand at this moment, the
WPA appears to have funds sufficient
to carry on at its post-purge level until
late in January. Harry L. Hopkins is
quoted as saying, "We are scraping the
bucket, but I am not worried." Presi-
dent Roosevelt at a recent press confer-
ence intimated that he would ask Con-
gress for a deficiency appropriation of
$500 million to last until the end of the
fiscal year on June 30. The U. S. Con-
ference of Mayors has estimated the
minimum need at $750 million and the
Workers Alliance of America at $1,-
250,000,000.
What the future of the WPA will
be, after June 30, is a matter of conjec-
ture. The President has indicated that
he will deal with relief in his budget
message to Congress early in the ses-
sion but whether in terms of budget
balancing or of continuing human need
or both no one now can say. Pessimistic
observers predict that the formulation
of any long-range relief policy will await
the reports and recommendations of the
various committees studying the reor-
ganization of federal departments and
bureaus. As this is written it all stems
to be anybody's guess.
Sharecroppers — Social and economic
maladjustments in the Cotton Belt, the
"alarming increase" in farm tenancy
during the past twenty years, and the
plight of the sharecropper family are
the subjects of an exhaustive study of
"landlord and tenant on the cotton plan-
tation," recently completed by the di-
vision of research of the WPA. The
study, which covered 9000 tenant fami-
lies on 646 plantations, was directed by
T. J. Woofter, Jr. Among conditions
cited as responsible for "sub-marginal
standards of living" among the tenant
farmers — and the report leaves no illu-
sions about how sub-marginal that liv-
ing is — are exorbitant rates of interest,
the one crop system and population pres-
sure. "The need for family labor puts
a premium on large families."
In matters of health the report points
out that the cotton growing states "have
the burden of a typhoid and paratyphoid
deathrate twice the national average
and of pellagra and malaria deathrates
more than three times the national aver-
age."
Turning to constructive measures the
report holds that AAA benefits failed to
help tenant farm families materially.
The Bankhead-Jones bill, proposed in
Congress in 1935, which would provide
for a federal land buying program is
cited as "particularly adapted to the
long time reform of agrarian life."
Other measures proposed are rural re-
habilitation, work and direct relief,
credit reform, production control, di-
versification of crops, soil conservation
and the retirement of sub-marginal
lands.
The report concludes: "The problems
of tenancy in the United States are so
far-reaching in significance, and so large
in volume, that measures to improve
the condition of those remaining within
the system should proceed simultane-
ously with efforts to help the most able
tenants to escape from the system."
Social Insurance
"T AM a postmaster," writes a cor-
respondent of a field office of the
Social Security Board. "Besides myself,
in this town, there are two employers
and one employe. Both employers hire
this man. Please send me all the neces-
sary information, materials and supplies
in order that I may meet the require-
ments."
Administration — The preliminaries
of assigning Social Security account
numbers in November and December to
some 23 million employes is reported
by the board to have met nation-wide
cooperation. The post office department
has issued instructions to postmasters
throughout the country to submit the
names of any employers who have failed
or refused to file information required
on Form SS-4. . . . Leo M. Cherne,
executive secretary of the Tax Research
Institute of America, described the
application forms for social security ac-
count numbers as "the clearest, least
complicated, and most skillfully designed
forms issued by the government that
I have as yet had the pleasure of exam-
ing.". . . Glenn A. Bowers, director of
the division of placement and unemploy-
ment insurance in the New York labor
department, recently stated that care-
ful study is being given to suggestions
for simplifying through amendment or
regulation the present record keeping
requirements under the state unemploy-
ment insurance law.
It was bad news to many that bonuses
given by firms to their employes are sub-
ject to social security taxes on wages.
. . . All paid employes of labor unions,
the Social Security Board has an-
nounced, are eligible to qualify under
16
THE SURVEY
the old age benefit provisions of the
Security Act.
The age records office of the board,
in Baltimore, now has approximately
1900 employes, setting up the accounts
of workers covered by the old age bene-
fit plan. No additions to this staff will
now be made. A battery of three hun-
dred alphabetical card punching ma-
chines, the largest single installation of
its kind in the world, is in use, sup-
plemented by fifty-five sorting machines
and as many tabulators. While benefits
begin to accrue January 1, first wage
reports will not be received for posting
until after July I, 1937. The initial
reports will cover six months. There-
after they will be filed quarterly.
Legislative Race -Through late No-
vember and December many states were
racing against time to get unemploy-
ment insurance laws on the statute
books, and approved by the Security
Board in time to save the federal pay-
roll taxes. Under the Security Act,
employers may deduct from their fed-
eral unemployment insurance tax up
to 90 percent of the amount they con-
tribute to state unemployment insurance
funds. Between November 5 and De-
cember 10, the board approved the un-
employment insurance laws of Texas,
Louisiana, Colorado, Connecticut and
Pennsylvania, bringing the total of ap-
proved plans to nineteen. Unemploy-
ment insurance measures have been en-
acted in addition in Arizona, New Mex-
ico, Oklahoma, Maryland and North
Carolina. A measure has passed both
houses of the Ohio legislature, but at
this writing, discrepancies as between
the house and senate drafts are still to
be adjusted. As this is written, special
legislative sessions, called to consider
unemployment insurance, are sitting or
are soon to meet in Virginia, West Vir-
ginia, New Jersey, Tennessee, Iowa,
South Dakota, Michigan, Vermont,
Minnesota and Maine.
The First Laws — Analysis by the So-
cial Security Board of the first sixteen
state unemployment compensation laws
approved, indicates that most states have
adopted the "pooled fund" type, which
passed the U. S. Supreme Court in the
New York case. [See The Survey, De-
cember 1936, page 368.] Only Wiscon-
sin has the straight employer-reserve
account type. Five states exact contri-
butions to the compensation fund from
all employers of four or more. The
District of Columbia taxes employers
of one or more. Idaho for the first year
includes employers of eight or more ;
after that, of one or more. Thirteen
states provide for a merit rating by
which employers with stable employ-
ment records reduce their tax rates.
Who would have believed that the utilitarian social service exchange
would ever fire the imagination of an artist! Yet from Boston comes this
photograph of a sketch for a mural by George Lloyd of the Federal Art Pro-
ject. "The sketch," says Laura G. Woodberry, director of the Boston Social
Service Index, "depicts our modern plant equipped with pneumatic tubes and
photostat service. We installed the photostat machine two years ago and it
has been a life saver. I believe that ours is the only index that uses it."
Only eight states require contributions
(present or future) from workers. Only
the District of Columbia provides bene-
fits higher than half pay, up to $15 a
week. The usual provision is one week's
benefit for each four weeks employment
in the preceding two years.
In the Courts — The New York em-
ployers who lost their case attacking
the constitutionality of the New York
unemployment insurance law in the
U. S. Supreme Court, have asked a
rehearing and reargument of the case
before a full bench of nine Justices.
Justice Stone, because of illness, did
not hear the case nor participate in the
decision. ... A three-judge federal
court in Alabama found that the state
unemployment insurance law violated
"due process" clauses of both the state
and federal constitutions. Attorney
General A. A. Carmichael announced
that the case would be appealed to the
Supreme Court. . . . The first case in-
volving the federal Social Security Act
to reach the U. S. Supreme Court was
filed December 15 on appeal from a
ruling by Federal Judge G. C. Sweeney
in Boston, who held unemployment com-
pensation taxes under Title IX to be
constitutional.
Proposed Changes — A resolution
demanding equal treatment for all
classes of banks under the Social Secur-
ity Act was adopted last month by the
executive committee of the National
Association of State Bank Supervisors.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue has'
held that banks which belong to the
Federal Reserve System are exempt,
while non-member state banks are not.
. . . According to a dispatch from the
Washington Bureau of the Wall Street
Journal, "Federal marketing of life in-
surance through the sale of voluntary
deferred annuities is being considered
for inclusion as part of the govern-
ment social security program." The pro-
posed annuities, according to this
source, would be offered primarily for
the protection of domestic and agri-
cultural workers not now covered by
the act.
Exception — The Mennonite Board of
Missions has written the Philadelphia
office of the Social Security Board ex-
pressing the willingness of its members
to pay social security taxes, but asking
that they be excused from accepting the
retirement benefits because of "con-
scientious scruples." In reply, the board
wrote that, "A person could refuse to
accept the benefits accrued under the
act if he or she had conscientious
scruples against doing so."
Company Plans -The National Lead
Company announces that it will revise
its retirement plan on January 1, to
supplement benefits under the Social
Security Act. . . . Westinghouse Air-
brake is carrying out a similar plan.
. . . The Graybar Electric Company
has changed its pension plan, as a result
of the Security Act, so that after 1941,
employes will receive from the govern-
ment- and the company combined the
full company retirement benefit plus
one half the government annuity, this
half representing in effect the portion
the worker has contributed. . . .Be-
JANUARY 1937
17
cause some of its lower paid workers,
due to their age, might not receive
more than $15 a month in old age bene-
fits under the Social Security Act, Vick
Chemical, Inc., plans to set up a private
supplementary plan. The company an-
nounces that "no employe of Vick need
fear discrimination because of his age."
Relief
DUBLIC relief in Kansas City, Mo.,
recently came up against a crisis be-
cause of the withdrawal of a subsidy
which the private Charities Bureau,
since last April, had supplied to the re-
lief committee. The money was used
for a special milk fund and for admin-
istrative expenses. Distribution of fed-
eral surplus commodities and certifica-
tion to Works Progress Administra-
tion and the Civilian Conservation
Corps depended on the donated funds.
In November the monthly subsidy had
reached $5000 and the bureau, which
must raise its money by an annual cam-
paign, was forced to withdraw from its
expensive "charity."
The local Civic Research Institute is
calling for action by the county, since
existing regulations in connection with
federal functions made it necessary to
reject the city's proffer of assistance
through personnel and facilities of ex-
isting city departments not concerned
with welfare work.
The responsibility of the county is
clear, says the institute. Public funds
should be used; the assistance of the
Charities Bureau was a temporary and
makeshift arrangement; and the county
is the governmental unit which can
carry on.
It is recommended further, by the in-
stitute, that the staff which has been
working for the Kansas City Relief
Committee is the best qualified person-
nel available and should be taken over
in the regular tax supported employ of
the county. "All too long we have been
merely tiding relief recipients over into
next week's misery." Latest word is that
staff volunteers are keeping things going.
Relief Policies — The Washington
state department of public welfare has
ruled that applications for relief by
strikers will be considered on an in-
dividual basis. Since it is "not a prob-
lem of unemployment" to be out of
work as the direct result of a strike, the
department will grant such direct re-
lief as is needed, but "will not certify
such wage earners to WPA." Where
the wage earner is unemployed because
of a shut-down resulting indirectly from
a strike situation, individual cases will
be considered for WPA certification.
. . . "The relief recipient should be re-
minded that his signature on each cash
relief check is also an affidavit that he
is not receiving any income or is not in
possession of any resources which have
not been reported to the Emergency
Relief Administration," warns the
Pennsylvania Emergency Relief Board
in an administrative memorandum. . . .
The problem of investigating possible
postal savings held by applicants for
relief is a recurring and obstinate one.
The Tennessee Welfare Commission
discovered, "from the Acting Third
Postmaster General" that "it is the
practice of the department to authorize
postmasters at postal savings deposi-
tory offices to furnish charitable organ-
izations and welfare agencies with in-
formation concerning individual ac-
counts, upon receipt of the written re-
quests of the depositors." This is done
not by overall order to all postmasters
in a state, but by specific request when
such authority is needed.
Chicago — Thirty member agencies of
the Chicago Council of Social Agencies
have drawn a joint picture of the "re-
lief state of Chicago" through current
reports to the council. In general, as
compared with October, December re-
ports reflect: great improvement in
some public services; little complaint on
the amount of food issued to dependent
families; praise for medical care given
in the homes by county doctors. Cloth-
ing, rent and fuel situations are better
but still far from adequate. Greatest
gaps appear in the need of dental care
for adults, and for hospitalization (now
postponed), lack of special diets, in-
sufficient clothing for school children.
Listed as particularly difficult to ar-
range are: regular allowances for un-
employable single men; provision for
healthy non-resident men twenty-one to
sixty-five years old, while other arrange-
ments are being made; WPA supple-
mentation; household equipment.
On the Move — From Florida, the
heart of the transient problem, a quali-
fied observer writes: "There is not
much news about transients these days.
Our transient committee probably will
go out of existence unless the new
governor re-appoints it. ... We have
just about as many transients as ever
and as far as treatment goes it is al-
most back to the pre-FERA level. The
much talked of border patrol ... a
rather sardonic joke . . . costs the state
$6000 or $7000 a month. There just
'ain't no hope' of Florida ever solving
its transient problem without federal
assistance . . ."
The National Committee on Care of
Transient and Homeless, and the Amer-
ican Public Welfare Association are
studying the problems inherent in the
fast growing trailer population. [See
Survey Graphic, January 1936, page
46.] They are being given unofficial aid
by the editor of a new magazine espe-
cially for trailer dwellers, who is taking
a survey of his subscribers. Question-
naires are being used to discover the
who, what and "where from" of these
trailer people. The APWA hopes to
have a thouand answers returned for
compilation by spring. Besides origins, it
is hoped to find some clues to such prob-
abilities of indigency and health haz-
ards as may lurk in broken-down,
second-hand trailers of the future.
Pennsylvania — Relief rolls in Penn-
sylvania turned upward again in De-
cember, after months of decline. Appli-
cations for relief, during a mid-Decem-
ber week, reached the highest peak since
the week ending March 9, 1936. . . .
In a recent report to the Pennsylvania
State Emergency Relief Board, Karl de
Schweinitz, executive director, pointed
out that reduction of administrative
funds, which has resulted in cutting the
staff to about a third below the level of
efficiency, actually costs the state ap-
proximately $3.50, in relief funds given
without adequate check and investiga-
tion, for every dollar saved by lopping
off staff.
Here to Stay? — The suggestion that
the Civilian Conservation Corps be
made a permanent government agency,
which Robert Fechner, CCC director,
offered recently to President Roosevelt,
has received wide and diverse editorial
comment. While "usually well-informed
sources" report that the President is
favorable to the idea, and intends to
maintain CCC at around its present en-
rollment of 350,000, officially the trial
balloon, at the moment of writing, is
still floating over Washington.
Public Welfare
HP HE urgent problems of policy and
administration besetting public
welfare officials everywhere were dis-
cussed in close formation, so to speak,
at a meeting in Washington in mid-
December of some 600 persons called
together by the American Public Wel-
fare Association. There were no set
papers and only one formal address,
that of Governor Paul V. McNutt of
Indiana. Instead there was a series of
round tables, limited in the number of
attendants, where participation was
general and topics were threshed out
in discussion under competent leader-
ship. Round table topics were: person-
nel, statistics for administrators and
the public, interstate problems, unem-
ployment compensation, and the rela-
tion of public welfare to medical care
18
THE SURVEY
and institutions. In addition were three
panel discussions on the subjects: pub-
lic welfare administration — state and
local; interpretation of public social
work; relationship of federal, state and
local governments in the social security
program.
A full report of the conference with
a summary of the round table and
panel discussions and of Governor Mc-
Nutt's address at the dinner meeting, is
contained in the December issue of
The Public Welfare News, the bul-
letin of the APWA, 850 East 58 Street,
Chicago, a single copy of which will be
sent free on request.
The APWA is anxious to have it
understood that its membership is open
to all persons engaged or interested in
public welfare. Regular members are
persons actually at work in the field;
associate members are persons in pri-
vate welfare work and interested lay-
men. Both pay $2 annual dues and
receive The News and occasional pub-
lications on request. Contributing mem-
bers, whose dues begin at $5, receive
all APWA publications. Agency mem-
bers— institutions and organizations —
receive all publications and additional
reference material valuable for admin-
istrative libraries, and are offered the
individualized informational and con-
sultative service of the association.
State Studies — The Wisconsin Citi-
zens Committee on Public Welfare,
appointed by Governor LaFollette, is
conducting its study of the welfare
services of the state through an execu-
tive committee and seven sub-commit-
tees; four functional — children, health
and mental hygiene, adult delinquency,
public assistance and public employ-
ment; and three structural — adminis-
tration, finance and personnel. The
executive committee which is the steer-
ing and policy forming body, includes
Professors Edwin Witte, Helen Clarke
and John Gaus of the State University;
William Spohn and H. F. Ohm, attor-
neys; and Arnold Zander, secretary of
the State Public Employes Association.
The work of the citizens committee has
been made a function of the legislative
library, its staff thus becoming subject
to civil service. Prof. J. H. Kolb, of the
rural sociology department of the uni-
versity, is the director.
The purpose of the committee is to
discover inadequacies, omissions, and
inefficiencies in the public welfare ad-
ministration of the state and local-
ities, in order to develop a long time
program which may necessitate exten-
sive modifications in personnel, finance
and administrative structure. Informa-
tion has been gathered by statistical
research and by field work by the sub-
committees. The frame of reference for
the study, whether of statutes, finance,
factual or statistical data, has been
the four functional committees.
It was Governor LaFollette's idea
that participation by laymen and direc-
tion by persons with a research rather
than a social work focus would ulti-
mately be more beneficial to the state
than the efforts of experts who would
conduct the study and make recommen-
dations, and might then fade from the
picture. Recommendations will shortly
be submitted to the governor and bills
will be prepared for the legislature
which convenes this month.
Michigan is making a study of its
entire welfare organization with a view
to a general legislative overhauling.
William Haber is chairman of the
Social Security Study Commission ap-
pointed by Frank Murphy, while gov-
ernor-elect, to prepare legislation per-
mitting the state to benefit from all the
provisions of the Social Security Act.
A state unemployment insurance meas-
ure will probably have become a law
by the time this is read. Harold Smith
cf the Michigan Municipal League is
chairman of a committee to draft legis-
lation looking to a reorganization of
all the state welfare services. [See The
Survey, November 1936, page 338]
The report of his committee will pro-
pose, it is said, a department of mental
hygiene, a department of prisons and
corrections and a department of public
welfare within the three of which
would be consolidated the functions
now performed by nearly a dozen
separate bodies.
California's unemployment relief sur-
vey, announced under the terms of a
legislative resolution as an undertaking
of the University of California to
gather information for the 1937 ses-
sion of the legislature, has fallen
through. Reason: after attempting un-
successfully to secure the immediate
services of a competent director the
university decided that the difficulties
involved precluded the possibility of a
worthwhile study within the limited
time available.
Staff Building — In Virginia the ap-
pointment by boards of supervisors of
county superintendents of public wel-
fare and city relief supervisors must
be approved by the state department of
public welfare. Since it was impossible
for many reasons to require that all
these posts be filled by graduate social
workers the department compromised
by announcing its aim "to limit ap-
proval to those persons who are: grad-
uate social workers; social workers
who have had experience and training-
in-service of such a character as to give
them undoubted ranking as successful
social workers; those who, as aides,
visitors, and so on, have had some ex-
perience in relief and welfare work
and who have demonstrated an aptitude
and capacity for training and improve-
ment." Of the ninety workers employed,
at last report, in the public assistance
program, sixty-six had been to college,
half of them completing their courses.
The remainder, with a single excep-
tion, are highschool graduates. Thirty-
five of the ninety have attended ac-
credited schools of social work, and all
have had experience in general welfare
or relief work.
Citizen Service
LJTOPING to stimulate citizen inter-
est in the formation of a sound
public welfare program, the Nebraska
State Conference of Social Work has
appointed a citizens' planning commit-
tee as "machinery" to stimulate local
committees throughout the state. The
American Association of Social Workers
is cooperating in the effort, which aims
to enlist representatives of fraternal
and civic groups and interested citizens,
rather than professional social workers.
With the help of a representative of
the state committee, temporary chair-
men have been appointed in some forty
localities, and groups have begun to
study local problems and planning and
legislative needs. While the state com-
mittee is stimulating the organization
of local committees, and will function
in fact-finding and correlating, the
groups themselves will be self-operating.
The only restriction imposed by the
state committee is that the locals be
strictly non-partisan.
"Alley Children"— While plans are
under way for curing Washington,
D. C/s housing sore spots, the "alley
dwellings," the Federated Church
Women of the district are doing some-
thing about the alley children. Begin-
ning in a single locality, a story hour
for children was used as an entering
wedge for the program. A clubhouse
and community center project for all
ages followed. At Christmas each of
the alleys was helped to decorate and
celebrate its own Christmas tree. The
church-family division of the Neigh-
borhood Councils of Washington has
taken up the project and hopes to carry
its efforts into each of the alleys.
Laymen's School — This year, for
the second time, Hartford, Conn., held
a layman's school for social welfare
under Council of Social Agency aus-
pices. Enght courses were given, includ-
ing community planning, education for
today, child welfare, family welfare,
JANUARY 1937
19
vocational guidance, labor problems,
public welfare activities, and social
security. Classes were held on consecu-
tive Mondays, enrollees being permitted
to take one course in the morning and
one in the evening.
In State Welfare — The Washington
state department of welfare, as part of
its program for using volunteer and
community services, is holding quarterly
conferences where professional and
voluntary workers, local welfare coun-
cil representatives and state department
staff confer on their mutual plans and
problems.
In Print — The story of how the
U. S. district court of St. Louis has
used volunteer advisers in its probation
and parole work since October 1930, is
told in detail by Milton W. Weiffen-
back in Probation, December 1936. The
service has indexed as available for this
work some 4000 "interested and quali-
fied persons residing throughout the
district." (From the National Proba-
tion Association, 50 West 50 Street,
New York.)
Libraries
LJOW much of this country is still
without library service is shown
by recent figures from the Bulletin of
the American Library Associations. Of
the 45 million Americans still out of
reach of a public library, only 12 per-
cent live in towns or cities of more than
2500 population ; 88 percent in villages
or rural areas. For the country as a
whole, there are 820 library volumes for
each thousand inhabitants. But the wide
regional disparity in available books to
read is shown by the fact that while
New Hampshire has 3570 library vol-
umes per thousand population, Arkan-
sas and Mississippi have only twenty.
The average state expenditure for
maintaining library service is 37 cents
per capita, with a range from $1.08
in Massachusetts to 2 cents in Arkansas
and Mississippi.
State Agencies — Change of legal or-
ganization is proposed in two states:
consolidation of the Iowa library com-
mission and the general department of
the Iowa State Library; creation of a
library board for the Michigan State
Library. . . . First appropriations will
be sought for the Arkansas library com-
mission, reestablished in 1935, and the
West Virginia library commission,
established in 1929. . . . Funds to make
field work possible will be urged in
Colorado, Kansas and Missouri.
Record Readers — Los Angeles led
all other cities the past year in the num-
ber of books lent for home use. In Los
Angeles, 364,000 persons, or 29 percent
of the resident population, are public
library card holders. These card holders
read, on an average, thirty books apiece
last year — a total circulation of nearly
11 million volumes. Each of the 62,000
Los Angeles children with library cards
read an average of forty-two books last
year. In addition to its great central
library, Los Angeles has forty-eight
branch libraries, supplemented by sixty-
nine "book stations."
State Aid — At least a dozen state
library associations are working on leg-
islative programs to secure state grants
for library development. It has been
found that plans must be drawn in re-
lation to state resources, the amounts
now provided for the libraries from
local sources, and the "standard" of
one dollar per capita. ... In Arkan-
sas, the present goal is an appropri-
ation of $50,000 a year for books for
large unit libraries, and for the work
of the state library commission. . . . The
Illinois plan is for $500,000 for the
biennium, half to be distributed to ex-
isting libraries on the basis of popula-
tion, half for service to new areas
through contracts with existing libraries
or through county and regional libraries.
.... The state library association of
Iowa will seek state aid to replenish
book stocks depleted during the depres-
sion. ... In North Carolina, plans are
being made to ask for state aid to
establish a complete system of regional
libraries. . . . The state association in
Texas will ask state aid of $750,000
for the next two years to strengthen the
extension work of the state library, and
to develop ten district libraries to give
service to far flung localities now with-
out it. [See Survey Graphic, May 1936,
page 327.]
National Conference
A NEW section, Public Welfare
Administration, has been added to
the permanent organization of the
National Conference of Social Work.
Grace Abbott of the University of Chi-
cago is the chairman who will develop
the program for the Indianapolis meet-
ing in late May. . . . Mary Anderson
of the Women's Bureau of the U. S.
Department of Labor has assumed the
chairmanship of the social action sec-
tion of the conference to which the late
Isaac M. Rubinow was elected at the
Atlantic City meeting. . . . Special com-
mittees approved by the conference ex-
ecutive committee which will arrange
sessions during the Indianapolis meet-
ing include with their chairman: Social
Treatment of the Offender, Sanford
Bates, Federal Bureau of Prisons;
Social Aspects of Children's Institu-
tions, H. W. Hopkirk, Albany, N. Y.;
Public Health, Dr. Martha M. Eliot,
U. S. Children's Bureau; Social Aspects
of Housing, Joel D. Hunter, Chicago;
Care of the Aged, Robert T. Lansdale,
Social Science Research Council; Spe-
cial Relief Problems, Joanna C. Col-
cord, Russell Sage Foundation; Statis-
tics and Accounting in Social Work, C.
Rufus Rorem, Julius Rosenwald Fund.
The executive committee of the
National Conference has approved fifty-
two associate and special groups to
meet under its wing in Indianapolis.
The National Conference of Juvenile
Agencies returns this year after a long
absence, with Roy McLaughlin of
Meriden, Conn., as chairman of its pro-
gram committee.
Public Assistance
U'EDERAL public assistance grants to
the forty-three participating jurisdic-
tions under the Social Security Act, since
February have totaled $93,586,370.98.
Of this amount $80,710,674.56 was for
old age assistance; $3,270,500.68 for
aid to the blind; and $9,605,195.74 for
aid to dependent children. [Jurisdic-
tions now include forty-one states, the
District of Columbia and Hawaii. See
page 2.]
All told, 1,439,600 needy individuals
were receiving public assistance under
the Social Security Act in December,
according to estimates based on reports
for the last nine months. Of this num-
ber, approximately 1,117,200 are aged,
32,160 are blind and 290,240 are de-
pendent children.
The steady expansion of these three
programs is significant in relation to the
decline in general relief expenditures
which has been taking place at the same
time. The objective of public assistance
under the Social Security Act is to
assist the states in caring for three
groups whose needs are likely to be
continuous over a long period of time.
However, because of lack of available
funds for categorical relief, large num-
bers of these needy aged and blind and
of dependent children, have been car-
ried on general relief. A comparison of
public assistance payments during the
first six months of the act's operation,
with estimates of general relief obliga-
tions based on data assembled by the
Federal Emergency Relief Administra-
tion, shows a steady increase in public
assistance expenditures, and decreases
in those for general relief. The latter
dropped about $16 million from Febru-
ary through July. During the same
months, state-federal expenditures for
public assistance increased by about
$11,500,000— from $4,614,328 to $16,-
504,590. By December, monthly pay-
20
THE SURVEY
ments to individuals from combined
state, federal and local funds had in-
creased to an estimated total of $24,-
614,000 for all three forms of public
assistance.
In Print — The American Public Wel-
fare Association has issued a bibliogra-
phy on Social Security. (APWA Bib-
liography No. 2, October 1936. Price
10 cents from the association, 850 East
58 Street, Chicago.) ... A compara-
tive review of Canadian and British
social insurances and public welfare
has been published by the Canadian
Welfare Council of Ottawa. (Britain's
Social Aid and Ours. Price 10 cents
from the council, Council House, Ot-
tawa, Canada.)
About Education
AN active campaign for permanent
federal aid for education will be
made by both lay and professional
groups in the new Congress. The Har-
rison-Fletcher bill, introduced last year
with the backing of the National Edu-
cation Association, will be introduced
again. It provides for an initial appro-
priation of $100 million, and an increase
of $50 million a year until $300 million
a year is reached. These funds would
be allocated to the states on the basis
of the population between five and
twenty years of age. The manner in
which the funds would be used to fur-
ther a program of public education is
left wholly to the states. The proposed
amount would provide about $2.54
per child the first year, increasing to
$7.63 in the fifth and thereafter.
Suggested Reform -A radical change
in the curriculum of colleges which
undertake to train youth for citizenship
is needed, according to the findings of
a study of campus agencies influencing
social ideals, just completed by Harold
Saxe Tuttle of City College, New York.
Reading magazines dealing with social
problems was found more effective than
study of history in developing "social
mindedness." Cooperative projects in
social service appeared more valuable
than the study of literature. The in-
fluence of the instructor was found to
be more significant than the subject
taught. Mr. Tuttle urges that the study
be extended over a longer period and a
larger number of colleges.
Camps for Girls — Educational camps
for girls, organized and directed by the
National Youth Administration will
soon offer girls from families on relief
opportunity for four months of work,
recreation and study. The plan, while
it differs in many respects, roughly
parallels the Civilian Conservation
Corps camp program for boys. Sixteen
camps for girls are now in actual oper-
1924
1928
193!
1936
i » i III
II III III
Johnny and Mary used to skip along quiet streets or down safe country lanes
to school. But that picture has changed, as the National Education Association
points out in its new research bulletin, Safety in Pupil Transportation. An
increasing proportion of the children depend on the school bus to take them to
the consolidated school or the central highschool. This bulletin considers
traffic hazards, and suggests safety precautions as to equipment, inspection
and standards of operation which should be taken by school authorities and
the community. (Price 25 cents from NEA, 1201 16 Street, N.W., Washington.)
ation; thirty-four more will soon be
ready. Enrollment will be limited to
five thousand. Enrollees get board, lodg-
ing, and incidentals, but only $5 a month
in cash. They work about three hours
a day. The rest of the day is devoted
to sports and other recreation, and to
studies in English, home economics,
hygiene, and other subjects suited to
individual age and taste. Dorothea
deSchweinitz is national director.
Penn School— How a school is help-
ing to raise the standards of living and
of agriculture in its community is sum-
marized briefly in the report of Penn
School for 1936. Established in 1862,
the school gives normal, industrial and
agricultural training to Negroes. It is
located on St. Helena Island, off the
coast of South Carolina. The "aims
for every home" which the school is
helping to realization are: buildings
whitewashed or painted ; wells twenty
feet deep, with a pump; sanitary toilet;
vegetable and flower gardens; poultry,
every child of school age in school ;
every adult in club work.
Report and Record — The American
Youth Commission, 744 Jackson Place,
Washington, D. C., brings out monthly
a mimeographed bibliography: Current
References on American Youth Prob-
lems. . . . Electric Utilities is the theme
of the tenth annual highschool debate
handbook, published by Lucas Brothers,
Columbia, Mo. It was prepared by
Bower Aly. . . . The U. S. Office of
Education has prepared a valuable bib-
liography (annotated) of Research
Studies in Education, 1934-5. (Bulle-
tin 1936, No. 5. Price 25 cents from
the superintendent of documents, Wash-
ington, D. C.) . . . Up-to-date infor-
mation on pledges of loyalty and oaths
of office now required of teachers is
given in Teachers Oaths, mimeographed
bulletin prepared by the research divi-
sion of the National Education Asso-
ciation. (Price 15 cents from the asso-
ciation, 1201 Sixteenth Street, N.W.,
Washington, D. C.)
Community Funds
HP HAT eagerly awaited barometer,
the result of the fall community
chest campaigns, this year crept up a
little. Compared to a similar group last
year, 187 chests have reported a gain
of 4.7 percent, and have raised a total
of $38,085,874. This substantial first
installment on the estimated and hoped-
for $80 million for year-round cam-
paign results, is 94.5 percent of the
total goal of the chests reporting. It
indicates however that most chests are
still 10 percent below their 1929 level.
The percent of increase over last year
JANUARY 1937
21
shown by chests holding their campaigns
•before election averaged 7.2, while post-
election campaigns raised this year's
totals by an average of only 3.8 percent
over last year. Community Chests and
Councils, Inc., lists as notably successful
campaigns those of Worcester, Mass.;
Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwau-
kee, Chattanooga, Birmingham, Hous-
ton, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle.
A study by CC and C, Inc., cover-
ing replies from forty-eight cities widely
scattered over the country indicates that
chests this year encountered resistance
from : factors relating to the Social Se-
curity Act (costs, misunderstandings) ;
from election returns (by diverting
attention, causing bitterness, emphasiz-
ing attitudes toward the government
relief program) ; from the tax situation;
from public relief and government social
work ; and from over-confidence or
"staleness" of campaign organizations.
It was suggested by some that improved
economic conditions are resulting in
public apathy toward need.
Worcestei — Skeptics got the shock of
their lives when 15,000 visitors came
the first day to see an exhibit of social
welfare services of Worcester, Mass.,
put on by the Community Fund. At
last reports 80,000 visitors had seen the
displays.
Yonkers — A "teaser" device was used
by the comparatively new Yonkers,
N. Y., community chest this year.
Placarding the town with a poster bear-
ing an unexplained plus mark, the chest
followed with a series revealing the
slogan of the campaign, "Give plus,
neighbor!" Every giver of more than
his last year's donation, and every team
making more than its quota, was en-
titled to membership in the "mythical
legion of the Plus."
Re-financing — St. Louis recently
adopted a new plan of central financing
for its social agencies. Formerly, the
United Charities function was limited
pretty much to raising and collecting
money needed by the agencies selected
to share the funds, without any control
over agency budgets or opportunity for
preliminary study of the agency work
or needs. Early this year, after three
years of striking failures to reach cam-
paign goals, a citizen committee, aided
by Allen T. Burns of Community
Chests and Councils, Inc., drew up a
reorganization plan.
In explaining the new plan, Peter
Kasius, director of the United Charities,
said, "Some organization needs to look
at the community as a whole. Without
central organization, without central re-
search, study and planning, we give
blindly and spend wastefully. With such
planning and organization we do all
that is humanly possible to meet the
social problems of the community with
intelligence, with sympathy and with
direction." A complete analysis of the
plan is given in Social Studies of St.
Louis, September 1936, published by
the St. Louis Community Council Re-
search Department, 613 Locust Street.
In Print — Data relating to financing
of Jewish Federations and Welfare
Funds have been compiled and only
recently published as Part II of the
1935 Year Book of Jewish Social Work.
Income and expenditures, by fields of
work, are summarized and analyzed for
that year. (Price one dollar from the
Council of Jewish Federations and Wel-
fare Funds, Inc., 71 West 47 Street,
New York.)
The Public's Health
LIVERY state in the union is cooper-
ating in the public health provisions
of the Social Security Act, under direc-
tion of the U. S. Public Health Service.
Since last February $11,333,000 have
been appropriated, and marked advances
already have resulted from the use of
these funds for research activities and
to stimulate state and local public
health activities through federal sup-
plementation.
Training centers for public health
personnel have been established at vari-
ous educational centers, also through
Social Security cooperation. Dr. Fred.
1. Foard, of the U. S. Public Health
Service, speaking to health officers in
California, pointed out the significance
of this development: "Our regional
office has had numerous inquiries from
young men who are recent graduates in
medicine from leading medical schools.
In every instance they have expressed
an earnest desire to receive training in
order that they might enter the public
health field as a permanent vocation.
... If Titles V and VI of the Social
Security Act continue in effect, thereby
making it possible to continue to train
this type of personnel for a few years
and to place these people in public
health positions ... it will in reality
have meant a 'new deal' for the public
health movement . . . the character of
health service rendered will be far more
efficient than that which has been known
to most communities in the past."
City Figures — Summarizing 1935
vital statistics for twenty-eight large
cities, with total population over 27
millions, the bulletin of the New York
state department of health finds the
crude deathrate slightly reduced from
1934, and the birthrate slightly in-
creased. Infant mortality for the cities
was 49.4 per thousand live births in
1935, a distinct improvement over 1934.
Chicago held the best record, with a
rate of 40.
Among the five largest cities, New
York had the lowest deathrate charged
to automobiles in 1935 — 14.8 per hun-
dred thousand of population. Among
the twenty-eight cities only Milwaukee
had a more favorable rate.
For the entire 27 million city dwell-
ers, only 482 deaths from diphtheria
were recorded during 1935, a striking
improvement over earlier years.
District Health Centers — Experi-
ence with establishing health work in
cities through district centers now is old
enough to be reported on, yet so new
that it calls for inquiry and experimen-
tation. Ira V. Hiscock, professor of
public health at the Yale University
School of Medicine, has published a
useful study of organization and plan-
ning in District Health Administration
in which is recorded the experience of
New York City, supplemented by that
of other localities. (Price 65 cents from
the Milbank Memorial Fund, 40 Wall
Street, New York.)
Women's Rights — This year, for
the first time, women with requisite
academic qualifications were admitted
to candidacy for degrees at the school
of public health of Harvard University.
Formerly they could take only a cer-
tificate.
Telling — A service performed by many
health departments is regular publica-
tion of rating lists which tell the public
how good or bad are their milk dealers
or favorite restaurants. The division
of health of the Dayton, Ohio, Welfare
Department calls attention to its service
with: "Where do you eat? The month-
ly rating of restaurants is a helpful
guide for those who are interested in
eating where cleanliness of utensils is
considered of paramount importance."
Bad ratings are published as well as
good.
Rural Health — Whole time county
or district health service had reached
612 counties in thirty-eight states when
last reported by the U. S. Public Health
Service. This means, however, that
only 28.7 percent of the rural popula-
tion has whole time health service.
Delaware, Maryland and New Mexico
lead with all counties covered. Of the
612 units, 95.3 percent were receiving
financial assistance from one or more of
the following: state boards of health,
U. S. Public Health Service, Rocke-
feller Foundation, American Red Cross,
American Women's Hospital Fund,
22
Rosenwald Fund, Commonwealth Fund,
Milbank Fund.
A major purpose of the Social Secur-
ty Act is establishment and mainten-
ance of rural public health services,
through federal supplementation of
local appropriations. Every state now is
undertaking some part of this program.
In Print — Continuity and Growth of
the State Department of Health, "an
historical interpretation," which was
presented by Homer L. Folks at a
recent conference of the State Charities
Aid Association of New York, now is
available in reprint. (From the associa-
tion, 105 East 22nd Street, New York.)
. . . The story of epidemic amebic dysen-
tery, as seen in the Chicago outbreak
of 1933, has been published by the U. S.
Public Health Service. The result of a
painstaking investigation which involved
health authorities in Chicago, the U. S.
Public Health Service, and other ex-
perts, it is of considerable interest.
(Price 20 cents from the superintendent
of documents, Washington, D. C.) . . .
The New York state department of
health has published for the non-profes-
sional public a four-page circular on
pneumonia. A project of the depart-
ment's bureau of pneumonia control,
it gives simple information on the
nature of the disease and care of the
patient until the physician arrives.
(From the department, Albany, N. Y.)
. . . The September quarterly bulletin
of the Health Organization of the
League of Nations is devoted to nutri-
tion in its many ramifications. (Price
65 cents from the World Peace Foun-
dation, 8 West 40 Street, New York.)
Housing
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
MERCUROCHROME, H.W. & D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodium)
After a thorough Investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
(1935)
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Request
HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md.
If You're Told to "ALKALIZE"
Try this Remarkable ."PHILLIPS" Way
On every side today people are
being urged to alkalize their
stomach. And thus to ease the
symptoms of "acid indigestion,"
nausea and stomach upsets.
To gain quick alkalization, just
do this: Take two teaspoons of
Phillips' Milk of Magnesia 30
minutes after eating. Or, take
two Phillips' Milk of Magnesia
tablets, which have the same
antacid effect.
Relief comes almost at once —
usually in a few minutes.
Nausea, "gas," fullness after eat-
ing and "acid indigestion" pains
leave.
Try this way. When you
see that any box or bottle
you accept is clearly
marked "Genuine Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia." A
big box of the tablets, to
carry with yon, costs
only 25c.
MILK OF MAGNESIA
~* HAT some four hundred persons
— public officials and interested
laymen — from every section of the
country should attend the meeting of a
housing organization but three years
old would indicate that the subject to
be discussed had left the category of
wishful thinking and was ripe for action.
Such is the lesson of the recent confer-
ence in Philadelphia, under the auspices
of the National Association of Housing
Officials. Although the large attendance
reflects the efforts of the retiring chair-
man and secretary, Ernest Bohn and
Coleman Woodbury, obviously public
housing, as a movement in the United
States has come of age.
Despite healthy disagreement evid-
enced in the lively discussions as well
as in the formal addresses there was a
significant degree of agreement on fund-
amentals. Some there were who thought
that preserving residential values
through the organization of neighbor-
In answering
hoods was a step backward in com-
munity planning, while others disagreed
only as to the type of organization ;
some unreservedly felt cooperative
housing the panacea, others that our
experience in cooperative undertakings
is too frail a structure upon which to
build. A large group felt that the phys-
ical standards of the fifty public projects
completed or in process were too high.
One small group opposed any direct
subsidy, but most of the "housers" ac-
cepted the principle, debating only the
form it should take.
There were no dissenters to the fact
that the housing situation has become
intolerable, that housing is a public
responsibility and must be attacked
from a long range point of view and not
as a relief problem ; that a housing
shortage is imminent and that if it is
dealt with by emergency measures, as
in 1921, much ground that has been
gained in housing in the past three or
four years will be lost; that the pub-
lic housing program must be decentral-
ized ; that states and municipalities
must make some financial contribution;
and that ways must be found to reach
lower economic groups than those able
advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMOXTHLV
23
to pay the rents which must be de-
manded under the present setup.
The discussions at the conference
were practical, based on this country's
short but exciting experience with pub-
lic housing. Despite the recognition of
grave obstacles, a note of optimism ran
through the sessions. There was no
dissent to the opinion of England's Sir
Raymond Unwin that the progress
made in a few years in the United
States in housing is, in his judgment,
miraculous; nor to his warning that
r.ot until a large part of the general
population — consumers and others — is
determined that human beings must be
housed and not herded is ultimate suc-
cess possible.
Uncle Sam's Houses— If you want
the story, up to date, of the housing
division, Public Works Administration,
send for a well illustrated booklet en-
titled Urban Housing. (Price 20 cents
from the superintendent of documents,
Washington, D. C.) Here is current
history set down in black and white by
the agency most concerned, yet offering
a straightforward uncolored narrative.
The appendices contain valuable data
regarding the development of public
housing abroad and in the United
States; a resume of municipal, state
and federal housing legislation, includ-
ing a transcript of last year's Wagner
bill ; and a description of each of the
fifty public housing projects under con-
struction, as well as the seven completed
limited dividend projects.
Demand Plus — Four of the seven
private limited dividend projects fin-
anced through government loans are
100 percent occupied and have waiting
lists. Two others are 99.4 percent occu-
pied, while another has leases which
amount to a 96.4 percent occupancy.
Rentals of apartments and stores are
calculated to carry the corporations
and refund the government loans with
interest. Incidentally Boulevard Gar-
den Apartments, Queensboro, Long
Island, has been awarded first prize
in the apartment building class in the
annual building competition of the
Queensboro Chamber of Commerce.
Light at Last — Many influential
groups, not directly concerned with
housing, are getting on the bandwagon.
The United States Conference of May-
ers went on record as unqualifiedly be-
hind the Wagner Housing Bill — or
similar legislation — "in order that we,
as cities, may meet our responsibility
for providing decent, cheap and health-
ful houses for those unable to secure
housing ... as well as enabling the
cities to eliminate the slum areas with
all their disgraceful conditions."
The third National Conference on
Labor Legislation called by the Sec-
retary of Labor made definite recom-
mendations. Asserting that the housing
problem demands bold and courageous
policies on the part of governments,
local, state and national, and main-
taining that it is no longer possible to
cope with it on an emergency basis,
the housing committee of the confer-
ence suggested that increasing public
ownership of land is the most realistic
solution of the problem. In its report,
the committee maintained that though
private enterprise is unable fully to
meet the need, it could extend its field
of operation through better building
practices and lower interest rates based
on long term investment in well plan-
ned neighborhoods, as well as through
the use of public credit to limited divi-
dend and cooperative groups. But, con-
tinued the report, government subsidy
is the only way to meet the housing
problem of the lowest third of the popu-
lation; hence this group too would back
an even broader and more liberalized
measure than the Wagner bill.
The New York County Republican
Committee recently submitted to Gov-
ernor Herbert H. Lehman and mem-
bers of the incoming legislature a
proposed bill to amend the State Hous-
ing Law to provide for the erection of
state financed projects by municipal
housing authorities. Under the proposed
measure — which is limited to slum
clearance and building for families with
a maximum income of $2000 — the state
would contribute supervision and credit
up to $100 million, the city would con-
tribute management and tax exemption,
and the federal government the grants
promised in anticipated legislation.
Such a triangular association in the fin-
ancing of public housing has long been
held feasible by many experts.
Shortage Increases — The AF of L
has predicted that 1,320,000 new houses
would be needed annually for the next
decade and the National Association of
Real Estate Boards, after a survey of
249 cities, has warned that a housing
shortage is in the offing. More recently
the F. W. Dodge Company reported that
private construction contract awards
in September were greater than the total
for public construction. But evidence
that private industry is entering the low
rent housing field is not conclusive. The
PWA housing division stated recently,
in announcing an allotment of a million
and a half dollars to the Lackawana,
N. Y., City Housing Authority, that
the project is designed to alleviate highly
congested conditions aggravated by an
influx of workers due to the revival of
industry. Private initiative is not evident
in that particular picture.
Industry and Workers
\X/TDESPREAD training of young
people for industrial jobs to pre-
vent a future shortage of skilled labor,
is urged by W. Frank Persons, director
of the U. S. Employment Service. While
the U.S.E.S. is not handicapped in fill-
ing job orders by an immediate lack of
skilled workers, Mr. Persons warns
that because of long periods of un-
employment and because of industrial
changes, many workers now need new
training, and more will need it. The
government encourages job training
through the federal committee on ap-
prentice training, and through funds
made available to local authorities for
vocational education. There are now
958 apprentices indentured under plans
approved by the committee. Vocational
schools had 1,351,000 pupils last year.
Sit-Downs — The sit-down strike,
used with spectacular effect by French
workers last summer [see Survey
Graphic, September 1936, page 516]
and first tried by rubber workers in this
country, is used increasingly as a strike
technique. Last month, stay-in strik-
ers in the Bendix plant in South Bend
carried all their points. The company
agreed to negotiate with the United
Automobile Workers on all matters of
wages, hours and working conditions,
and not to make any agreement with
any other group on these matters before
having reached an agreement with the
union. . . . Some 1200 workers of the
Midland Steel Products Co. in Detroit
tied up the plant with a sit-down strike,
after management, while agreeing to
union demands for the forty-five-hour
week and the eight-hour day, refused
to grant the wage increases asked by
the union. At this writing, the strike
is still unsettled, and the workers are
entertaining themselves with "sings"
and games. Food, blankets and to-
bacco are sent in by friends outside the
plant. . . . The nation's flat glass in-
dustry was practically paralyzed in
December by sit-down strikes in plants
of the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Com-
pany. The strike was called when the
company officials and a union commit-
tee could not agree on the terms of a
new contract.
Homework— Interstate traffic in in-
dustrial homework "is a practice of
substantial proportions," according to
reports made by state labor departments
to the Division of Labor Standards,
U. S. Department of Labor. Actual case
reports indicate that New York is the
source of most of this interstate home-
work. In New York, industrial home-
work is strictly regulated. Seven of the
states into which New York materials
go have no laws regulating homework.
In many instances, homework is sent
direct to the worker; in other in-
stances, the contract system is used.
. . . The Division of Labor Standards,
through a committee appointed by the
Secretary of Labor following the con-
ference on labor legislation at Ashe-
ville, N. C., in 1935, has drafted a
model bill "for use in states contem-
plating revision of existing homework
laws or the introduction of new legis-
lation."
Minimum Wage — The first step to-
wards setting minimum wages for
women and minors in Rhode Island in-
dustry was taken last month by L.
Metcalfe Walling, state director of
labor, in appointing a wage board for
the jewelry industry. This industry was
chosen because it is one of the largest
industries in the state, and employs
more women than any other manufac-
turing industry in Rhode Island, with
the exception of textiles. . . . Follow-
ing the recommendation of the confer-
ence of employers, employes, lawyers,
24
THE SURVEY
and representatives of consumer and
civic organizations, called by the New-
York state industrial commissioner last
month, a committee headed by Prof.
Joseph P. Chamberlain of Columbia
University is drafting a constitutional
amendment. Though the conference was
called to consider "the next steps" in
minimum wage legislation, the proposed
amendment will not be limited to this
subject. It will, as recommended by a
conference committee of which Charles
C. Burlingham served as chairman, "be
interpretive and clarifying, removing
obstructions which have been created
not by the Constitution itself but by
certain unnecessary restrictive opinions
of the Supreme Court."
Workers' Education — Values of
workers' education are underscored in
I Am a Woman Worker, a scrap
book of autobiographies written by stu-
dents in various workers' schools, and
published by The Affiliated Schools for
Workers, Inc. (Price 50 cents from the
Schools, 302 East 35th Street, New
York.) . . . The Highlander Folk
School, Monteagle, Tenn., will open its
winter term this month with a broad-
ened program of community services
and extension work through southern
labor unions, in addition to courses for
its resident students. . . . The Work-
ers Education Bureau of America, 1440
Broadway, New York, observes its fif-
teenth anniversary with a special edi-
tion of its quarterly journal reviewing
its years of work, the present status of
workers' education in this country, and
a "forecast" of the next fifteen years.
Women Back to Work — Increased
hazards to women workers as they re-
turn to factory jobs after a long un-
employment period are brought out in
a new study by the U. S. Women's
Bureau. (Bulletin of the Women's Bu-
reau No. 147. Price 10 cents from the
superintendent of documents, Washing-
ton, D. C.) This second study of women
and occupational diseases, covering
1932-1934, points out that many workers
return to jobs suffering from malnutri-
tion, mentally less alert to danger,
physically more susceptible to the poison-
ous substances used in industrial proc-
esses. The study found that large num-
bers of women are constantly exposed
to benzol, to which women workers
have a special susceptibility, and to other
toxic solvent fumes. A decrease in cases
of lead poisoning of women was evi-
dent; "on the other hand, proof of the
urgency of continued research ... is
shown in the case of radium poisoning."
The study also emphasizes the silicosis
hazards of women employed in pottery
making, in spraying in enamel ware
factories, in plants packing abrasive soap
powders, and in other silica-dust indus-
tries.
Fair Standards— To make sure that
the coat, suit or hat you buy was not
made in a sweatshop or by child labor,
look for this label stitched to the lining.
CONSUMERS'
PROTECTION LABEL
Manufactured Under
Fair Labor Standards
Over 80 percent of the employers and
employes in the women's suit and coat,
and the millinery industries are urging
women shoopers to support their joint
effort to raise labor standards by pur-
chasing only labelled garments. The
National Coat and Suit Recovery Board
represents nine tenths of the industry
— over 2200 firms and more than 50,000
workers. The Millinery Stabilization
Commission acts for four fifths of its
industry — 1100 firms and 25,000 em-
ployes. These two branches of the ap-
parel industry have voluntarily set up
methods for policing themselves and
enforcing the standards they have
adopted. It is hoped that insistence by
shoppers on labelled goods will gain the
cooperation of the small percentage of
manufacturers and contractors who so
far have not joined the movement.
Study and Record — A selected bibli-
ography on minimum wage legislation
in the United States by Eleanor Davis
is offered by the Industrial Relations
Section, Princeton University, Prince-
ton, N. J. . . . The latest of the admir-
able Smith College studies is the Eco-
nomic History of a Factory Town by
Vera Shlakman. It pictures the ups and
downs of industry in Chicopee, Mass.,
and the lives of the factory workers
against the backdrop of community life.
. . . Child Labor Facts, 1937, will
bring you abreast of the situation in
this country and of the progress of
legislative efforts toward regulation and
control. (Price 25 cents from the
National Child Labor Committee, 419
Fourth Avenue, New York.)
People and Things
XTEW ZEALAND, Australia and
British South Africa will be visited
by Porter R. Lee, director of the New
York School of Social Work, who will
be on leave of absence for reasons of
health until October 1937. Mr. Lee will
make what he calls a trip of "inquiry
and consultation," studying social wel-
fare work in these British Dominions,
on behalf of the Carnegie Corporation.
He will give especial attention to gov-
ernmental provisions for insurance dis-
abilities, "which may be compared with
our recent social security legislation."
The depression, unemployment relief
and civil service methods will come
under Mr. Lee's scrutiny, all in keeping
with the Carnegie Corporation's policy
of encouraging visitation between the
British Dominions and the United
States. During his travels Mr. Lee will
make himself available, also, for con-
sultation on social work methods.
New Jobs — Miriam Steep, formerly
with Survey Associates' membership
and finance department, and recently a
regional supervisor in the National
Health Inventory of the U. S. Public
Health Service, is the new secretary
of the health division of the Welfare
Council of New York City. She suc-
ceeds Jane Hoey, now director of the
Bureau of Public Assistance of the So-
cial Security Board. Mrs. Steep also
has worked with the Twentieth Cen-
tury Fund and the Michigan FERA
on health and medical studies.
John F. Ballenger, who steered the
Detroit department of public welfare
through the hectic emergency years, is
now director of the Detroit office of the
Social Security Board. . . . Karl de
Schweinitz, director of Pennsylvania's
State Emergency Relief Board, has been
appointed deputy secretary of welfare
for the state in charge of its social
security services.
Dr. Vera H. Jones of the Denver,
Colo. APHA has been named director
of maternal and child health and care
of crippled children for the Colorado
State Board of Health, under the So-
cial Security administration. . . . Mary
C. Eden, for sixteen years director of
the school of nursing at Presbyterian
Hospital, Philadelphia, has retired. Miss
Eden has a record of thirty-five years'
continuous work in nursing administra-
tion. . . . Virginia A. Jones, who was
director of public health nursing courses
at Indiana University, has succeeded
Dorothy Carter at the national offices
of NOPHN, where she will be in
charge of educational activities, and
secretary of the education committee.
Miss Carter now is director of the
Boston Community Health Associa-
tion. . . . Margaret Reid, who was edu-
cational director of the Hartford, Conn.
Visiting Nurse Association now holds
the same position for the nurses of the
Welfare Bureau of the Metropolitan
Life Insurance Company in New York.
. . . The new superintendent of nurses
and principal of the school of nursing
at Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital, New
York, is Laura R. Logan from the Cook
County School of Nursing, Chicago.
The new director of social service at
JANUARY 1937
25
the Pennsylvania Training School at
Morganza, Pa. is Helen M. Donald-
son, former case supervisor in the Pitts-
burgh, Pa. home relief bureau.
Courses on probation and parole, de-
linquency and crime will be taught by
Wilson D. McKerrow, newcomer to
the staff of the New York School of
Social Work from the Family Welfare
Society of Niagara Falls, N. Y.
Esther Powell, from the University
of Nebraska, is a new instructor in
social work at the University of Pitts-
burgh. . . . Edith Miller Tufts has
resigned from the Pittsburgh Bureau
of Social Research to become editor and
associate in research for the Pennsyl-
vania Committee on Public Assistance
and Relief. . . . Louise McGuire, who
was director of social work of the Dis-
trict of Columbia juvenile court, has
been appointed as an area supervisor in
the bureau of public assistance of the
Social Security Board. . . . The Rev.
William J. Walsh, director of the Cath-
olic Charities of Seattle, Wash., heads a
new department of social work in Seat-
tle College.
Dorothy Hutchinson, formerly with
the New York Children's Aid Soci-
ety, has joined the field staff of the
New York School of Social Work.
. . . Nan Gerry, from the faculty of
the University of Georgia, has gone
to the University of Nebraska as in-
structor in case work. Miss Gerry
formerly was a field director of the
Family Welfare Association of Ameri-
ca. ... Robert Rutherford, new head-
worker of Trinity Neighborhood House,
Boston, comes from the Ellis Memo-
rial in that city. . . . Elizabeth M.
Herlihy, on the Boston City Planning
Board for twenty-two years, is now
executive secretary and chairman of
the Massachusetts State Planning
Board.
Caroline T. Jordan, widely experi-
enced in the field of child care, and at
one time on the staff of the New York
School of Social Work, is now with
the Illinois Children's Home and Aid
Society. . . . Rudolph Danstedt, re-
cently a Survey author, has left the
Boston Family Welfare Society and
joined the staff of the Family Welfare
Society of Queens County, N. Y.
Dr. James Alexander Miller, of the
College of Physicians and Surgeons of
Columbia University, has been chosen
president of the New York Academy ot
Medicine for the coming two-year term.
Dr. Miller for nine years was president
of the New York Tuberculosis and
Health Association. . . . Edmund E.
Day, director of the social science pro-
grams of the Rockefeller Foundation
and General Education Board, next
June will succeed Livingston Farrand
as president of Cornell University.
Meetings — The Council of Jewish
Federations and Welfare Funds will
hold its general assembly January 30-31
in Philadelphia. . . . The American
Birth Control League will hold its
annual meeting January 28 in New
York. A national convention also is
planned for April 2-3 in Louisville, Ky.
. . . The International Council of
Nurses will meet in London, July 19-24.
The National Tuberculosis Associa-
tion has announced two training insti-
tutes for secretaries or staff members of
local associations but open also to pub-
lic health nurses, board members and
those interested vocationally. Sessions
will be held February 8-20 in New
York, and the first two weeks of June in
Los Angeles, Calif. Information from
Phillip Jacobs, at the association, 50
West 50 Street, New York.
In Foreign Parts— The International
Industrial Relations Institute will meet
August 30 — September 1, at its head-
quarters, 171 Haringkade, The Hague,
Holland. Subject: Standards of living,
actual and possible. . . . The health
section of the World Federation of
Education Association will meet in
Tokyo, Japan, August 2-7. Information
concerning the program from Sally
Lucas Jean, 200 Fifth Avenue, New
York. ... A world forum tour to visit
Egypt, Palestine, India, China and
Japan, between February and May this
year, has been organized by the com-
mittee on international travel for adult
study of world activities. The tour will
be led by Walter W. Van Kirk and
Benjamin R. Andrews, both of Teach-
ers' College, Columbia University. In-
formation from World Forum Tours,
545 Fifth Avenue, New York.
Elected — The South Dakota State
Conference of Social Work chose for
its 1937 officers: president, Ellery E. Kel-
ley, Pierre ; vice-president, J. H. Craft,
Redfield; secretary-treasurer, Mrs. A.
M. Eberle. . . . New officers of the
Maine State Conference of Social Work
include: president, Sara T. Anthoine,
Portland ; vice-presidents, Judge Charles
W. Atchley, Waterville, and Louise
Hopkins, Bangor; secretary, Gerald
Murch, South Portland; treasurer, An-
ders Myhrman, Lewiston.
The New York State Conference on
Social Work this year elected: presi-
dent, the Rev. William C. Keane, Al-
bany; vice-presidents, Mrs. Walter J.
O'Brien, Utica; Joseph Schwartz,
Brooklyn; Fred Helbing, Coxsackie, and
David Dressier, New York. . . . The
new president of the National Travel-
ers' Aid is Mrs. John Jay O'Conner, of
Washington, D. C. The association
will celebrate its twentieth anniversary
with an April meeting in New York.
At its last meeting, the Massachu-
setts Conference of Social Work elected :
president, Ben M. Selekman; vice-presi-
dents, William H. Pear and Marian E.
Rowe; treasurer, Russell T. Williams.
Richard K. Conant, who recently joined
the faculty of Boston University, will
continue as field secretary and Marian
L. Spencer as conference secretary.
The National Association of Housing
Officials has elected as president George
Gove, New York, and as vice-president
Nicola Guilii, Los Angeles.
The Rev. Edgar De Witt Jones, of
Detroit, has been elected president of
the Federal Council of Churches of
Christ in America, and the Rev. Joseph
R. Sizoo, of New York, vice-president.
Deaths
J-JENRY MOSKOWITZ, Ph.D.,
New York social worker, civic and
labor leader, died suddenly in mid-
December. He was one of the founders
and the first headworker of Madison
House, and with his wife, the late Belle
Moskowitz, maintained a steady inter-
est in the settlement house movement
;ilthough the activities of their lives car-
ried them into many other areas. Dur-
ing the administration of Mayor John
Purroy Mitchell he was chairman of
the civil service commission and again
commissioner of public markets. He was
long associated with former governor
Alfred E. Smith, and with Norman
Hapgood, wrote a biography of Mr.
Smith, Up From the City Streets. In
recent years Dr. Moskowitz has been
active in the field of labor mediation.
At the time of his death he was im-
partial chairman of the Textile Finish-
ers' Association and the Men's Clothing
Industries of New York and Rochester
and executive director of the League
of New York Theatres. He was a
director of the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee and the Amer-
ican Ort, and to these organizations as
to many others gave unstintingly of his
powers of organization and of his rare
gift of human understanding.
FLORENCE RICHARD ROBINSON, psy-
chologist, widely known in the Middle
West and later in Connecticut, as an
educator, community welfare leader and
author, died recently.
ROWLAND C. SHELDON, executive sec-
retary of the Big Brother and Big Sis-
ter Federation and of the Crime Pre-
vention Institute, recently formed under
his leadership, died last month under
circumstances deeply shocking to his
many friends and associates. He died by
his own hand.
26
THE SURVEY
Readers Write
Sense with Sympathy
To THE EDITOR: Six years' work among
the blind has convinced me that these
people suffer almost as much from
the short-sighted attitude of the seeing
as from their own blindness. Some peo-
ple are surprised to learn that most
of the blind are able to dress themselves
unaided and even to help around the
house; they are downright skeptical
when told that certain exceptional
blind persons successfully compete with
sighted folk in many types of skilled
work and in the professions. There are
those, on the other hand, that labor
under the impression that blindness
ipso facto results in greater acuity of
hearing and of touch and smell, and in
a supernatural "sixth" sense which the
blind use in an "uncanny" way. I have
heard both opinions expressed by peo-
ple who ought to know better.
The truth is that while some of the
blind are unable to master any kind of
remunerative work, most of those un-
encumbered by an additional handicap
can be trained to become self-support-
ing in a relatively wide range of occu-
pations. To accomplish this two things
are necessary: schools where blind
youths can receive adequate training,
and welfare agencies able to win for
the capable and well-trained blind an
intelligently sympathetic hearing with
the general public and an opportunity
to work for their living. Instead we
have schools that still stress academic
courses at the expense of vocational
training and welfare agencies that null-
ify such efforts as they make to place
the blind in industry by their periodic
appeals for funds in which they play
up the "helplessness" of the blind.
These schools and agencies stultify
their position still further. Well-recom-
mended blind college graduates, capable
of teaching in schools for the blind or
of doing administrative work in agen-
cies for the blind, are dependent on
relief or on their families, while these
schools and agencies are staffed for the
most part with sighted people who
could find employment elsewhere. Last
year a large agency for the blind sup-
planted a blind executive by a sighted
one. Three months ago an official of a
national organization for the blind told
me that a position then vacant (and for
which I was not a candidate) would be
filled by a sighted person. The same
tendency prevails in practically all the
schools and agencies for the blind.
The first step toward ending the era
of sentimentality, confusion and nepot-
ism in organized work for the blind
was the enactment of the Randolph-
Sheppard law by the last Congress.
Under its provisions the U. S. Office
of Education will make a thorough
study of employment opportunities for
the blind with a view to opening new
fields of occupation. A concrete result
of this law has been to permit blind per-
sons to operate news, candy and cigar
stands in federal buildings. An unin-
tentional, though deserved, rebuke to
schools and welfare agencies for the
blind, is the provision that half of the
executive staff to administer this law
must be blind. The success of this
measure, however, will depend to a high
degree on the cooperation given it by
the social workers of the country.
HARRY J. BREVIS
Chaplain to the Blind
New York Board of Jewish Ministers
Re Relief
To THE EDITOR: I was very much in-
terested in reading the article, Off
Again — RELIEF — On Again, in the De-
cember Midmonthly Survey, and think
that much more material of the same
kind could be developed that would be
very constructive and helpful in pre-
senting the actual facts on the present
situation. It seems to me that it is
apparent from various accounts that the
unemployment relief fund has come to
be looked upon as a reservoir for those
who are temporarily out of work, and
in that respect I think it has dangerous
implications unless the administration is
handled in a rigid way to prevent abuses.
Chicago. EDWARD L. RYERSON, JR.
Yardstick for What?
To THE EDITOR: Here's something for
you to print if you are not getting as
hardheaded as the industrialists whose
"formula for giving" you reported in
The Survey for October.
You quote Donaldson Brown of Gen-
eral Motors: "One of the most seri-
ous threats to our social structure arises
from conditions which have forced gov-
ernment to assume responsibility for the
welfare of its citizens. . . ."
It is only too apparent that the big
corporations want the people to feel
obligated to them, but they don't want
to give any more than they have to.
Why, if this is not true, do they want a
yardstick?
And to cap the scheme, Mr. Brown
suggests that "... a corporation man-
agement is justified in contributing to
whatever degree it concludes, after care-
ful appraisal, that it may enjoy benefits
which will balance the costs so as-
sumed."
What, I should like to ask Mr.
Brown, are the benefits derived? Is it
the power over the community? Is this
to be the sole reason for contributions?
If we must have a formula, why not
one applied by the agency of the people
and one in which the funds are spent
in the interests of the people by the
people? In short, why not a social work
program supported by taxation? Do not
the industrialists disclaim responsibility
for social work, should it exceed what
they can profitably afford to spend for
the purpose? If they will not accept
responsibility to the people, then let the
people demand through their represen-
tatives that all classes be forced to pay
their just share to the government, for
the government to spend on social work
Further, this industrialist proposes a
program based on "taxes payable" by
the entire community. Clearly Mr.
Brown is thinking first of the General
Motors Corporation. What is more
apparent than that the person who can-
not pay his taxes cannot contribute to
the community fund? Then is the la-
borer, barely able to make ends meet,
to pay the balance of the fund to the
community chest?
And why the inconsistency in assign-
ing to each employer an amount pro-
portionate to the number of workers
employed, when the quota for the in-
dustrialist group is determined by the
percentage of taxes payable? Why isn't
this basis also used to determine the
quota of the entire group itself? Why-
do the industrialists object to paying
according to the amount of their profits?
Who can refuse to admit that he who
makes the most profits in a community
should pay the largest sums to the com-
munity chest?
It is not a Christian motive that
prompts the plan. To me, it seems clear
that the industrialist is seeking to ab-
solve himself of his social obligations.
Grand Forts, N. D. EARL MC!NTOSH
A Full-Face View
To THE EDITOR: The frank and in-
formed realism of Neva R. Deardorff's
articles, Planning the Welfare Pro-
gram, in the September and October
issues of The Survey, is the most en-
couraging thing I have seen come from
social work in a long time. She looks
in the face a confusion that as a rule
goes unrecognized. My regret is that
there are not to be more than two
articles. One gets the impression of an
abundance of facts and experience in
the background.
Cambridge, Mass. ADA E. SHEFFIELD
JANUARY 1937
27
Book Re vi e ws
Grime and Indifference
THE POLICE AND MODERN SOCIETY, by
August Vollmer. University of California
Press. 253 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
LJ ERE is a searching inquiry into
the underlying reasons for the
prevalence of crime in this country. The
author points out that the American
police are highly decentralized; that
they are handicapped by lack of com-
pulsory registration of criminals; that
shyster lawyers and politicians run in-
terference for the criminals. He criti-
cizes the administration of civil service
in the police field, pointing to its failure
to provide the best personnel. While
emphasizing the importance of stability,
he insists that an honest and aggressive
executive is powerless when he is unable
to reward or to dismiss.
With his opening sentence, the author
contends that the police can go no
further in the control and prevention of
crime than the public will permit. Add-
ing that the greatest handicap met by
the police is the overwhelming indiffer-
ence of the public, Mr. Vollmer pro-
ceeds to analyze its failure in support-
ing law enforcement. The practices of
most newspapers are indicated as detri-
mental to law enforcement. Public as-
saults against police departments de-
stroy their prestige in the eyes of the
people and create disrespect for all law
enforcement officials. While he allows
that an improperly selected, poorly-
qualified and untrained police person-
nel has built up, by ill-advised tactics,
a tremendous public resentment, the
author considers this a result rather
than a cause. He contends that this
type of personnel is the product of a
public attitude which, itself, is induced
by more fundamental causes.
Analyzing the police duties which
have been added to the orginal function
of protection against the criminal, the
author concludes that much of the pres-
ent improper public attitude is due to
police activity directed against commer-
cialized vice. "The only safe and sane
method of handling the problem . . .
of all the parasitic vices is by licens-
ing, regulation and control through a
state agency established solely for that
purpose and empowered to enforce the
regulatory provisions." He believes that
vice may be overcome, if at all, only
by education; that prohibition and re-
pression are improper approaches; that
the entire community must believe that
the prohibited act is wrong before en-
forcement can be successful.
A public which always has resented
underworld political influence, at the
same time has failed to understand
that legal repression of vice is certain
to produce "illegal and unholy alliances
between denizens of the underworld and
public officials," says Mr. Vollmer. Re-
pression of vice contributes to the
demoralization of government because
vice lords find it necessary to secure
political control in order to continue
operating their businesses. When re-
sponsibility for the enforcement of vice
laws is removed from the regularly con-
stituted police forces, the politicians —
especially those of the underworld type
— are deprived of their power and inter-
est in influencing police activity.
Mr. Vollmer recognizes a definite
widening of police responsibilities into
the field of crime prevention, indicating
that, in the search for the causes of
crime, police cooperation is indispen-
sable. In each community the police
must serve as the coordinator of the
various social agencies. "The present
administration of criminal justice will
have to be reorganized," he concludes,
"at least so far as necessary to provide
corrective and preventive methods for
dealing with pre-delinquent children,
rather than to wait until the criminal
habits are firmly established."
The student, the police officer and the
public will find Mr. Vollmer's latest
volume interesting and enlightening,
with its critical analysis of a crime
situation which cuts deep into the police
problem of America. It contains con-
clusions reached after a lifetime of
study and work. They are unique.
They are recommended to reformers
and to politicians alike.
O. W. WILSOX
Bureau for Street Traffic Research
Harvard University
Seafarers' Troubles
FOC'S'LE AND GLORY-HOLE. A STUDY OF
THE MERCHANT SEAMAN AND His OCCUPA-
TION, by James C. Healey. Merchant Marine
Publishers' Association. 211 pp. Price $2
postpaid of The Survey.
/COVERING a new field in literature,
living and working conditions among
American merchant seamen, this book
appears when those conditions are the
subject of intense industrial strife. Any-
one interested in the background of the
present seamen's strike will do well to
read the last three chapters: Seamen
and Organized Labor, The Seaman's
Relation to The Shipowner, and Inter-
national Measures to Improve the
Occupation of Seafaring. The author's
treatment of the continuous discharge
book versus single discharges, while
illuminating in most respects, would be
more helpful if it gave a clearer evalu-
ation of the contentions of those in the
seamen s organizations who are opposed
to the discharge book.
As a study, the present volume leaves
much to be desired. The factual mate-
rial is incomplete. There is a tendency
to dwell too heavily on English data
and draw therefrom analogies which
may or may not be correct as applied
to the American scene. There is a
further tendency to dwell rather exclu-
sively on the Atlantic seaboard and con-
ditions in the Port of New York, ignor-
ing in the main the Pacific and Gulf
ports. Conditions on the Great Lakes
are rather fully treated. In several
places one is startled to find the author
writing as though experience under sail
were still a possibility for the would-be
seaman. There are minor contradictions
and technical errors as to the tradi-
tional roles of the licensed personnel
aboard ship.
The author's sympathies are with the
conservative wing of the seamen's or-
ganizations. His final section of recom-
mendations is replete with practical
suggestions for improving the living and
working conditions and the wages of
seamen; for decasualizing the seamen's
calling; for improvement of the leader-
ship in unions and employers' organiza-
tions, and the development of better
cooperation brtween the two groups.
New York JOANNA C. COLCORD
Statistical Pitfalls
CAN DELINQUENCY BE MEASURED? bv
Sophia M. Robison: a publication of the
Welfare Council of New York City. Columbia
University Press. 277 pp. Price $3 postpaid
of The Survey.
CASING her analysis on official
cases (known to the children's
court) and on public and private agency
non-court cases in New York City for
1930, Mrs. Robison seeks to prove
the limited application of statistical
analysis to the type of data now avail-
able on juvenile delinquency. The find-
ings indicate that in New York City,
court data alone are inadequate for the
calculation of delinquency rate by age,
sex, type of offense, religion, national-
ity and residence. She points to the
differences in composition, for these
factors, between the large percentage of
delinquency cases handled by non-court
agencies and the composition, for the
same factors, of court cases.
The study is most convincing as to the
need of extreme caution in attributing
delinquency causation to such gross fac-
tors as age, sex, race, nationality, par-
ental nativity, and so on. It becomes
highly controversial, however, when it
undertakes to evaluate the influence of
residence on delinquency. In this area,
28
the volume is a vigorous attack upon
the theory of the ecological school of
sociologists which claims to find a pri-
mary cause of delinquency in the social
transmission of delinquent attitudes and
habit patterns from person to person
and from nationality to nationality in
delinquency areas.
The author does not attack the eco-
logical school with evidence based on
case studies of delinquency causation,
but attempts to meet the ecologists on
their own ground by analysis of her
own area findings in comparison with
that of other students. She presents
evidence from her own study that the
calculation of area and neighborhood
rates of juvenile delinquency is incon-
clusive as a demonstration that neigh-
borhood environmental factors cause
delinquency, because such a calculation
conceals significant variations in rates
for different nationality groups. She in-
dicates also that application of mathe-
matical formulae to area rates discloses
no statistically significant constancy of
difference in rates for interstitial slum
areas and for peripheral areas of higher
cultural status. The author does not
deny the existence of delinquency areas
but denies their statistical or sociolo-
gical importance.
The view represented in this study
is an extreme one, and gives a some-
what hopeless picture of the use of
quantitative measures in this field.
Many will question the author's re-
jection of the findings of the ecological
group without an analytic presenta-
tion of her own actual area findings,
and a clear comparison of her own
statistics with those of previous studies.
For the issue raised by the author is
not one of interpretation of data, but
one of fact, as to the very nature of the
data of area distribution of delinquency.
While this study settles no issues, it
is highly provocative of thought, and
should be widely read by all persons
concerned with problems of social caus-
ation of anti-social behavior.
New York HARRY M. SHULMAN
Musico-therapy
MUSIC IN INSTITUTIONS, by Willem Van
de Wall and Clara Maria Liepman. Russell
Sage Foundation. 457 pp. Price $3 postpaid
of The Survey.
TN this book, the authors present an
exhaustive study of the possibilities
of the application of music in various
sorts of institutions, including those for
the physically infirm, for patients suffer-
ing or convalescing from physical illness,
for the mentally diseased, for the delin-
quent and for the criminally insane.
The psychological effect of music,
either actively produced or passively
received, on normal individuals of vari-
ous age levels is carefully considered
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
ZONING
The Laws, Administration, and Court
Decisions During the First 20 Years
By EDWARD M. BASSETT
ZONING has proved one of our most useful social inventions in preserving
human and economic values in cities. Here is a discussion of its origins, its legal
development and present status, by the leading authority on the subject.
275 pages $3.00
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
130 East 22d Street New York
HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL WORK ENGINEERING
By JUNE PURCELL GUILD and ARTHUR ALDEN GUILD
A book valuable to public welfare workers, social case workers,
medical workers, and those employed in other fields of social work
by providing methods of organizing to meet the social problems of
their communities. Agency board members join professional social
workers in proclaiming Social Work Engineering as something new
in the field of social organization and financial support, practical,
readable, authoritative.
$1.50 prepaid •from The Survey
and analyzed and its value convincingly
proved. In its application in institutions,
major importance is given to thera-
peutic value in the individual case
rather than in what may be called mass
effect — the effect upon the atmosphere
of an institution, for example. One
way of expressing this, perhaps, is that
advance has been made from group
hygiene to individual therapy. This is
an important advance beyond the usual
comprehension and application of music
in the comparatively few institutions
where music is seriously considered a
part of the therapeutic armamentarium.
The aims of musico-therapy and the
scope to which it may well be carried
in widely varying institutions are de-
scribed thoroughly. Detailed informa-
tion is given concerning the advisable
methods and programs of work.
The chapters on what qualifications
should be possessed by a music worker
and what technique best employed are
valuable. Undoubtedly long experience
has enabled the authors to give sage
advice regarding the administrative
problems involved and the means of
coordinating a music program with
other activities in institutions.
This book is unique in its scope and
thoroughness and is ideal as a refer-
ence. It well merits a place on the
table, rather than on a shelf in the
medical library in every welfare insti-
tution. A. H. PIERCE, M.D.
V eterans' Administration Facility
Coatesville, Pa.
The Work of Play
PLAYGROUNDS, THEIR ADMINISTRA-
TION' AND OPERATION, edited by George
D. Butler. A. S. Barnes for the National
Recreation Association. 402 pp. Price $3 post-
paid of The Survey.
/"\NE of the surprising results of the
passing depression has been the
greatly increased thought given to pub-
lic recreational facilities. Among them
has been the extension of children's
playgrounds under government loans
and made-work projects, and the result-
ing diversion of thousands of workers
from other walks of life to become
play leaders, many of them to continue
in this profession.
This volume on the administration
and operation of playgrounds is a wel-
come and authoritative addition to the
few books on the subject. While it is
strictly limited to the scope announced
in its title, its four hundred pages appear
to touch on every question which may
arise in the administration and opera-
tion of playgrounds for children from
five to fifteen years of age.
In (mswttrinQ advertisements please mention SPRVKY MIUMONTHLY
Communities and recreation boards,
municipal officers as well as individuals
will find here, as a check on the oper-
ation of their own playgrounds, a ready
reference derived from approved prac-
tice and illustrated by experiences in
large and small localities. For the
director or worker who has not been
able to visit some of the more progres-
sive centers in the country or to study
at first hand the solution of perplexing
playground problems, the examples and
comment given will provide a good sub-
stitute for contact and observation.
Stanton, N. J. CHARLES J. STOREY
Sensible, But —
LIVE LONG AND BE HAPPY, by Lewellys
F. Barker. Appleton-Century. 224 pp. Price
$2 postpaid of The Survey.
' I AHIS is a sensible and accurate
book in spite of some inaccurate
chapter-headings. Looking down the
table of contents, one sees nine chapters
listed, each on the prevention of a group
of diseases — infectious, respiratory, car-
diac, and so on. I looked with special
interest to see what Dr. Barker would
say in his chapter on Prevention of the
Diseases of the Blood and of the Blood-
building Organs. Ten diseases are well
described, in eight of which we know
absolutely nothing about prevention.
Dr. Barker with characteristic accur-
acy describes the diseases and adds, "No
mode of prevention is known."
As a popular description of some
common diseases the book is excellent,
though it cannot tell us much about
how to "live long and be happy."
RICHARD C. CABOT, M.D.
Harvard University
Practical Approach
PROBLEM CHILDREN: AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE STUDY OF HANDICAPPED CHILDREN IN
THE LIGHT OF THEIR PHYSIOLOGICAL, PSYCHO-
LOGICAL, AND SOCIAL STATUS, by John Edward
Bentley. W. W. Norton. 437 pp. Price $3.50
postpaid of The Survey.
A USEFUL compilation of data con-
cerning the problems of children is
here offered mainly in terms of educa-
tional maladjustments. Included are
lectures given at the University of Colo-
rado by Professor Bentley. The book
deals mainly with methods rather than
results, and hence sets forth the prac-
tical aspects of the laboratory approach
to children's problems, together with a
considerable amount of reference ma-
terial for the instruction and guidance
of teachers. The author's viewpoint is
one of zealous advocacy of the organi-
zation of child guidance clinics in
schools. In the midst of references to
the work of others, the impress of his
ideas and aim is insufficient.
The volume is divided into four
parts: Physical Disabilities of Problem
Children, Psychological Approach to
the Study of Problem Children, The
Social Disabilities of Problem Children,
Educational Disabilities of Problem
Children. In the light of this classifica-
tion, it is obvious that the scope of the
book offers a variety of data especially
useful to teachers desirous of under-
standing handicapped children.
New York IRA S. WILE, M.D.
Every Doctor Should Know
THE MEDICAL VALUE OF PSYCHOAN-
ALYSIS, by Franz Alexander, M.D. Norton.
278 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
improvement will reappear, since read-
ers look to the annual for a twelve-
months' chronicle of developments in
those spheres. L. L.
Mental Power
HEALTH, SICKNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY,
by R. W. Wilde. Oxford University Press.
201 pp. Price $1.25 postpaid of The Survey.
one or two exceptions, this
comes as near being a textbook of
psychoanalysis as anything that has yet
been published. It is an admirable pre-
sentation of the medical aspects of this
technique and also sets forth the find-
ings of the Chicago Institute for Psy-
choanalysis, of which Dr. Alexander
is the head. It is a book which should
be read by every medical practitioner,
for it contains the kind of information
which the coming generation of physi-
cians will have respecting the bearing
of the psychological factors in the sev-
eral types of illness.
WILLIAM A. WHITE, M.D.
Washington, D. C.
Planners' Yearbook
AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC AN-
NUAL— 1936, edited by Harlean James.
American Planning and Civic Association.
540 pp. Price $3; $2 to members; postpaid
of The Survey.
\7"ALUABLE as always, this year the
American Planning and Civic An-
nual is devoted largely to papers deliv-
ered at five conferences held during the
year under the auspices of the National
Conference on State Parks, the Ameri-
can Planning and Civic Association, and
the American Society of Planning Offi-
cials.
Since the present volume marks the
twentieth anniversary of the creation of
the National Park Service it is espe-
cially fitting that it should encompass a
look backward and forward at the de-
velopment of the country's national and
state parks. Just a decade after the first
national capital park and planning com-
mission was appointed, the section on
the Federal City is especially timely.
In Part II, containing the proceed-
ings of the Joint Conference on Plan-
ning held last May in Richmond, Va.,
the planning problems of the city,
county, state, region and nation receive
microscopic analysis at the hands of
experts in physical planning.
Because the conferences covered by
this volume produced so much valuable
material, the wisdom of omitting other
subjects usually handled in the annual
is not questioned. However, it is to be
hoped that, next year, sections on land
uses, forests, housing and local civic
handy little volume, very at-
tractively printed by the Oxford
University Press, is a brief study of
mental power in illness and health,
based on personal experience in guiding
people through difficult adjustments in
daily life. It contains nothing especially
new, and is adapted more to readers
unfamiliar with the topics discussed
than to those who are informed in re-
cent psychology. Although the interac-
tion of mind and body is the main
theme, there is more reference to glands
and to other matters pertaining to the
body than to mental powers of any sort.
Brooklyn, N. Y. H. W. DRESSER
Right, Left, Center
EDUCATION AND ORGANIZED INTER-
ESTS IN AMERICA, by Bruce Raup. Put-
nam. 238 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
(~)N the jacket of this volume the
^>^ reader finds: "As Charles Beard
says, no topic is more timely than the
attempts by special, organized groups
in the United States to infect the minds
of school children and college students
with various kinds of propaganda.
Religious, political, industrial and patri-
otic organizations spend huge sums
every year to bring pressure to bear
upon our educational systems. What
are the results in human terms of such
activity? What are the methods em-
ployed? What good or ill is accom-
plished? The answers to these ques-
tions are provided in Dr. Raup's bril-
liant analysis."
The book justifies the jacket blurb.
It is an excellent study of pressure
groups and how they attempt to influ-
ence education. The materials are pre-
sented dispassionately; indeed this is
one criticism many persons will make
of it. They would have chosen to vent
their spleens. Raup does not, and he is
probably correct in his method; parti-
cularly as the hundreds of documented
statements, made by individuals con-
nected with organized interests and here
presented, should suffice to stimulate
all decent-minded individuals who are
deeply concerned at the purposes and
methods of these groups.
The question of the entire book as
stated by the author is: "What focal
points, in the deeper drama of social
consensus, constitute the real crises as
these organized interests meet the edu-
cator and the public?" It is a grand
30
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
Library Service
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 520
North Michigan Ave., Chicago. To aid in
the extension and improvement of library
service.
Child Welfare
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA—
C. C. Carstens, director, 130 E. 22nd Street,
New York City. A league of children's agen-
cies and institutions to secure improved
standards and methods in their various fields
of work. It also co-operates with other chil-
dren's agencies, cities, states, churches, fra-
ternal orders and other civic groups to work
out worth-while results in phase of child
welfare in which they are interested.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSER-
IES—130 East 22nd Street, New York City.
To federate day nurseries in the U. S. and
assist them to establish and maintain ap-
proved standards of care.
Community Chests
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS. INC.
— 155 East 44th Street, New York. Informa-
tion and consultation about cooperative plan-
ning and financing; of social work through
chests and councils of social agencies.
Foundations
AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND,
INC.— 15 West 16th Street, New York. A
national organization for research and field
service. Activities include : assistance to state
and local agencies in organizing activities
and promoting legislation ; research in legis-
lation, vocations, statistics, and mechanical
appliances for the blind : maintenance of a
reference lending library. M. C. Migel, Presi-
dent ; Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATWN— For the Im-
provement of Living Conditions — Shelby M.
Harrison, Director ; 130 E. 22nd St., New
York. Departments : Charity Organization,
Delinquency and Penology, Industrial Stu-
dies, Library. Recreation, Remedial Loans,
Social Work Interpretation, Social Work
Year Book, Statistics, Surveys. The publica-
tions of the Russell Sage Foundation offer
to the public in practical and inexpensive
form some of the most important results of
its work. Catalogue sent upon request.
Industrial Democracy
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY—
Promotes a better understanding of problems
of democracy in industry through its
pamphlet, research and lecture services and
organization of college and city groups. Ex-
ecutive Directors. Harry W. Laidler and
Norman Thomas, 112 East 19th Street, New
York City.
Drop a Line
to the
HELP WANTED COLUMNS
SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
when in need of workers
Health
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL
HYGIENE, INC.— Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles,
president : Dr. C. M. Hincks, general direc-
tor ; Clifford W. Beers, secretary : 50 West
BOth Street, New York City. Pamphlets on
mental hygiene, child guidance, mental
disease, mental defect, psychiatric social
work and other related topics. Catalogue of
publications sent on request. "Mental Hy-
giene," quarterly, $3.00 a year.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR PUBLIC
HEALTH NURSING— 60 W. 50th St., New
York. Dorothy Deming, R. N., Gen. Dir.
Advisory service, statistics, monthly maga-
zine.
NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION—
60 West BOth Street, New York, Dr. Kendall
Emerson, managing director. Pamphlets of
methods and program for the prevention of
tuberculosis. Publications sold and distributed
through state associations in every state.
American Review of Tuberculosis, medical
journal, {8.00 a year ; and Monthly Bulletin,
house organ, free.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE— A
Clearing House, cooperating with social work-
ers in referring indigent mothers to medically
directed birth control clinics in 41 states, in-
cluding 17 centers in Greater New York. In
areas lacking centers, qualified physicians are
available. Phone or write: 515 Madison
Avenue, New York City. WIckersham 2-8600.
President: Clarence Cook Little. Medical
Director: Eric M. Matsner, M.D.
New York City
THE BIRTH CONTROL CLINICAL RESEARCH
BUREAU, 17 West 16th Street: MARGARET
SANGER, Director: has added evening ses-
sions, Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
from 7 to 9 P.M., for the benefit of mothers
who work and cannot come to the Clinic
daily from 9 to 4.
National Conference
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL
WORK — Edith Abbott, President, Chicago;
Howard R. Knight, Secretary, 82 N. High
St., Columbus, O. The Conference is an
organization to discuss the principles of
humanitarian effort and to increase the
efficiency of social service agencies. Each
year it holds an annual meeting, publishes
in permanent form the Proceedings of the
meeting, and issues a quarterly Bulletin.
The sixty-fourth annual convention of the
Conference will be held in Indianapolis, Ind.,
May 23-29, 1937. Proceedings are sent free
of charge to all members upon payment of
a membership fee of $5.
Racial Adjustment
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC.. with its
44 branches improves social conditions of
Negroes seeking "not alms, but opportunity"
for them. Secures and trains social workers.
Investigates conditions of city life as bases
for practical work. Publishes OPPOR-
TUNITY, Journal of Negro Life. Solicits
gifts. 1133 Broadway, New York, N. Y.
Vocational Counsel and Placement
JOINT VOCATIONAL SERVICE, INC.— Offers
vocational information, counsel, and place-
ment in social work and public health nurs-
ing. Non-profit making. Sponsored as na-
tional, authorized agency for these fields by
American Association of Social Workers and
National Organization for Public Health
Nursing, 122 E. 22nd St. New York City.
Religious Organizations
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS
— 105 East 22nd Street, New York City.
The Inter-Denominational body of 23 wo-
men's home missions boards of the United
States and Canada uniting in program and
financial responsibility for enterprises which
they agree to carry cooperatively, such as
Christian social service in Migrant labor
camps, and Christian character building
programs in Indian American government
schools.
President, Mrs. Millard L. Robinson
Executive Secy., Edith E. Lowry
Associate Secy., Charlotte M. Burnham
Western Field Secy., Adela J. Ballard
Migrant Supervisor, Gulf to Great Lakes
Area, Mrs. Kenneth D. Miller
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN,
INC.— 221 West 57th Street, 9th floor. New
York City. Mrs. Arthur Brin, President:
Mrs. Maurice L. Goldman, Chairman Ex.
Com. : Mrs. Marion M. Miller, Executive Di-
rector. Organization of Jewish women initi-
ating and developing programs and activities
in service for foreign born, peace, social
legislation, adult Jewish education, and so-
cial welfare. Conducts bureau of interna-
tional service. Serves as clearing bureau for
local affiliated groups throughout the coun-
try.
NATIONAL BOARD. YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATIONS, 600 Lexington Ave.,
New York City. An international Christian
woman movement devoted to service for
women and girls and the attempt to help
build a society in which the abundant life
is possible for every individual.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTION ASSOCIATIONS— 347 Madison
Avenue, New York City. Eskil C. Carlson,
President : John E. Manley, General Secre-
tary. A federation of 1123 local associations,
through state and area councils, for Chris-
tian character education among youth. Meets
annually to determine service projects and
budget for cooperation with local member
organizations in program emphasis and in-
terpretation, fiscal operations, etc. Empha-
sizes lay-professional cooperation, group and
club activity, and self-governing programs
of physical, social and religious education,
public affairs, international education and
special cooperative projects, citizenship, etc.
Specialized work among transportation, army
and navy, student, colored, rural, and certain
other groups.
Recreation
NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION—
315 Fourth Ave.. New York City. To bring
to every boy and girl and citizen of America
an adequate opportunity for wholesome,
happy play and recreation.
Is your
organization
listed in
the Survey's
Directory of
Social Agencies?
If not —
why not?
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
31
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
Rates: Display: 21 cents a line, 14 agate lines to the inch. Want advertisements
five cents per word or initial, including address or box number. Minimum charge,
first insertion, $1.00. Cash with orders. Discounts: 5% on three insertions; 10% on
six insertions. Address Advertising Department.
TEL.: CT TDVCV MTnMOMTHT V n2 EAST 19th ST-
ALGONQUIN 4-7490 aUKVtJI JVllUJVimM riL I NEW YORK CITY
SITUATION WANTED
Expert STENOTYPIST available any time social
work conferences, economic discussion
groups, board meetings, etc. Reasonable.
Excellent references. Miss E. Kixman, 3983
46th St.. Long Island City. Telephone:
Ironsides 6-8394.
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SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
SEEMAN BROS., INC.
Groceries
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New York
Your Own Agency
This is the counseling and placement agency
sponsored jointly by the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers and the National
Organization for Public Health Nursing,
National, Non-profit making.
122 East 22nd Street, 7th floor. New York
GERTRUDE R. STEIN, INC.
Vocational Service Agency
11 East 44th Street NEW YORK
Mt'rray Hill 2-4784
A professional employment bureau specializing
in social service, institutional, dietetic, medical,
publicity, advertising and secretarial positions.
to EMPLOYERS
Who Are Planning to Increase Their Staffs
We Supply:
Executives
Case Workers
Recreation Workers
Psychiatric Social Workers
Occupational Therapists
Dietitians
Housekeepers
Matrons
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Stenographers
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HOLMES EXECUTIVE PERSONNEL
One East 42nd Street New York City
Agency Tel.: MU 2-7575 Gertrude D. Holmes, Director
job of documentation of the stands
taken by organizations and individuals
on a multiplicity of social issues in their
relationships to education.
This book would be worth having
for reference if for no other reason
than that it contains A Chart of Issues
and Groups and how the groups stand
on the issues. The qhart indicates the
positions held by forty-six groups, ex-
tending from the National Association
of Manufacturers, the Chamber of
Commerce, and the D.A.R., on the
right; through the YMCA, the National
Catholic Welfare Conference, and the
Federal Council of Churches of Christ
of America, roughly center; to the
League for Industrial Democracy, the
American Civil Liberties Union, the
American Federation of Teachers, and
the Communists, on the left. The chart
shows how the groups stand on such
issues as laissez-faire competition, gov-
ernment in business, private property
as an incentive, use of police power
against radicals, preparedness — the way
In an fiver in (j
to peace, nationalism, gradualism, direct
action, and isolation of schools from the
current social order.
The book should be read by all those
interested in the social implications of
education and should be required read-
ing for educational dupes, among them,
conceivably, many school administrators.
ROBERT K. SPEER
School of Education
New York University
For Good Teachers
CONTROL IN HUMAN1 SOCIETIES, by Jer-
ome Dowd. Appleton-Century. 475 pp. Price
$3 postpaid of The Survey.
' I AHE rise of dictatorships and the
emergence of long range planning
as a method of government have pro-
duced widespread interest in problems
relating to the sources of authority and
to the nature of social control. That
this interest should be reflected in the
teaching of sociology was inevitable ;
and to Professor Dowd belongs the
credit of being the first teacher of that
advertisements hhasc mention SURVEY
32
subject to produce a textbook centered
upon the theme of social control.
Unfortunately, it cannot be said that
his effort is altogether successful. On
the one hand, the book contains too
much material which is only loosely
connected with the central theme ; on
the other, it falls short of tracing the
changing pattern of the exercise of au-
thority to changes in the possession of
economic power.
The history of control is suggestively
treated in three phases: paternalism,
rebellion against it, and the beginnings
of social control — that is, the modern
history of Europe and the Western
world supplies most of the illustrative
material. But the transitions from one
era to another are too naively related
to political and moral causes.
Later sections deal with the problems
of control, as seen in relation to diverse
social functions, and to "principles of
control applied to the present chaos in
the Western world." Here discussion
shifts confusingly from the concern with
actual authority which conditions the
nature of institutions to that with meth-
ods of control which lubricate the
working of institutions but do not affect
their essential character.
The book contains many key state-
ments of principle with which one may
reasonably take issue. In the hands of a
good teacher such a book provides occa-
sions for mental exercise much to be
desired; but the dissent which the text
provokes is liable to extend from
theories to the statement and interpre-
tation of the facts themselves. This is
partly because it abounds with value
judgments derived from a social philos-
ophy which is nowhere explicitly stated,
judgments which embrace everything
from political programs to aesthetics
and from behavior in the family to
institutional efficiency. So much approv-
ing and deploring is out of place in a
textbook.
In short, this is stimulating if not
always agreeable reading for those in-
terested in problems of social control
because of its wealth of historic illus-
tration, but hardly suitable for class-
room use in the way the author intended.
BRUNO LASKER
SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT OWN AND
OPERATE ELECTRIC UTILITIES? Com-
piled and edited by E. C. Buehler. Noble and
Noble. 350 pp. Price $2 postpaid of Tlir
Survey.
THIS book, which is Volume III in Mr.
Buehler's annual debater's help books,
covers the subject selected for debate in
the highschools and colleges throughout
the country for 1936-37, Resolved: That
all electric utilities should be govern-
mentally owned and operated. The
advantages and disadvantages of govern-
ment ownership are set forth. A bib-
liography offers aid to further study.
MinMONTHI.Y
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVE
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office:
762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Editorial Office:
112 East 19 Street, New York
To which all communications should be sent
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, associate editors;
RUTH A. LERRIGO, HELEN CHAMBERLAIN, assistant
editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., LEON WHIFFLE, JOANNA C. COL-
CORD, RUSSELL H. KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
FEBRUARY 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 2
Frontispiece 34
"We Demand . . ." CHARLES F. ERNST 35
Little 'Dobe Homes in the West c. w. BURR 37
What is Worth Saving in
"This Business of Relief" DOROTHY c. KAHN 38
Volunteers Venture WALLACE w. NORTH 39
These Juvenile Courts of Ours CHARLES L. CHUTE 40
Miss Bailey Says. . .
Security Has Its Growing Pains GERTRUDE SPRINGER 42
Behavior As It Is Behaved — IV
Goldie and Gracie Step Out ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 44
The President's Committee on Administrative Management 45
The Common Welfare 47
The Social Front 49
WPA . Relief . Child Labor • Public Assistance « The In-
surances • Cooperatives • Nurses and Nursing • The Public's
Health • Jobs and Workers • Child Welfare* Professional •
Citizen Service' • Interpretation • People and Things
Readers Write 59
Book Reviews 60
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• The essence of any peaceable relationship
in human affairs is that nobody shall have
arbitrary power. — WALTER LIPPMANN, news
commentator.
• Civilization could never advance without
the liberals; it would fall into anarchy with-
out the conservatives. — DR. CHARLES A.
BROWNE, V. S. Department of Agriculture.
• As little as the battle between single ants
of an anthill is essential to survival, just so
little is this the case with the individual mem-
bers of a human community. — DR. ALBERT
EINSTEIN.
• The world has no time for bungling or
muddling through. That was good enough
for the older civilization, but not for us now.
— PROF. STEPHEN LEACOCK, McGill Univer-
sity, Montreal, to Amherst College Alumni
Council.
• Launching the selective draft during the
World War was child's play compared to the
brain-busting job of getting the old age
pension system of the Social Security Act
under way. — DREW PEARSON and ROBERT S.
ALLEN, Washington news commentators.
• Revolution means a new beginning with
new naive principles all void of immunity
and ready to be corrupted. It carries within
it a strategic necessity, usually exaggerated,
for suppression of the criticism of opposi-
tion.— H. G. WELLS in The Anatomy of
Frustration.
So They Say
• Nations, like individuals, will fight when
they want something more than peace or
fear something worse than war. — PROF.
ROBERT McEiROY, Oxford University.
• To my mind there is as much harm done
by what is known as "smother love" as by
anything else in the world — LADY NANCY
ASTOR to the Child Welfare League of
America.
• Free discussion is not a luxury in a living
society but a necessity. It is one vital pre-
requisite for genuine growth in men and
groups. — FRANK KINGDON. president, Newark
University, N. ].
COMING NEXT MONTH
County boards of public welfare are a
"reality situation." We already have
some 3000 of them. In the March
Survey Robert T. Lansdale of the
committee on public administration of
the Social Science Research Council,
will appraise the strengths and weak-
nesses of the board system as he has
seen it functioning over the country.
• The Court has a great advantage over
the rest of us — what it can't prove it can
still decide. — PROF. EDWARD CORWIN, Prince-
ton.
• I want to do what I can to see that life
is not made a burden for the many and a
holiday for the few. — The late SENATOR
JAMES COUZENS.
• Much that is called research in education
and in the social order is nothing more than
the laborious rearrangement of the obvious.
— NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, president,
Columbia University.
• The most noticeable characteristic of the
humanitarian, cultural and social service units
of government is their uniformly inadequate
support — PROF. JOHN F. PFIFFNER, Univer-
sity of Southern California.
• The most efficient, equitable form of rela-
tionship between management with its frail-
ties, and labor with its emotions, is through
collective bargaining. — M. W. CLEMENT,
president, Pennsylvania Railroad.
• We are in the habit of saying that we
do not want fascism or communism, we want
democracy; and yet our democracy en-
courages a spirit and desire for individual
satisfaction and notoriety which is without
humility and often without a decent sense
of shame. — JOHN LOVEJOY ELLIOTT, Net*
York Society for Ethical Culture.
Harris and Ewing
Universal Newsreel from Underwood
Work relief employes take their claims and demands on public funds straight to the people.
Two huge demonstrations in January against WPA layoffs: in the capital (top) and New York
THE SURVEY
FEBRUARY 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 2
"We Demand . . ."
By CHARLES F. ERNST
Director, Washington State Department of Public Welfare
CATEGORIES — like them or not — seem to be crys-
tallizing as our accepted system of public assistance.
As a result we have the aged, the blind, the WPA
folk, the single men, the direct "reliefers" and all the rest
of the categorized, putting on pressures for better stand-
ards, each group for itself, and each competing with all the
others for funds for its cause. All this to the disadvantage
of the less articulate — children for example — and the con-
fusion of the public. At the same time social workers are
on the spot, since they, who must administer the intricate
system, are out in front, the first point of pressure.
I never come away from meetings with pressure dele-
gations without a feeling that social workers have been
left holding the bag. It is not easy to say just who walked
out and left it with us. It might have been those enthusiasts
who campaigned for office with promises of bigger and bet-
ter relief, or jobs, or pensions or anything else that seemed
to have vote appeal. Maybe we fooled ourselves into think-
ing that the federal government, through WPA and PWA,
really could supply jobs for the able-bodied unemployed
while states and local communities, with the help of grants
from the Social Security Board, could meet the needs of
the rest. Possibly we had become so schooled in budget bal-
ancing that when funds were low, we were able to ration-
alize the procedure of reducing individual assistance.
Can it be that we have lost perspective — have run out of
ideas? Why, otherwise, should social workers have to be on
the defensive before pressure groups which are asking only
for the things that we as social workers already agree they
should have?
The consistent aim of social workers has been to raise
low standards of living and to help people gain a higher
standard for themselves, by their own efforts if possible. As
good salesmen, or educators, if you like, social workers have
done their part to create a demand among the people for
whom a higher standard of living is socially and economic-
ally desirable. Why, now, should they be placed in the posi-
tion of salesmen who, having created a demand for an
article, must then refuse to make the sale?
Each week for the last month, several of us have been
getting together in an effort to work out some practical
methods of assisting certain groups of persons who are in
obvious need. Around the table at these meetings were rep-
resentatives of the Works Progress Administration, State
Department of Public Welfare, Board of County Commis-
sioners, City Council, Central Labor Council, and Com-
munity Fund. Also newly-elected members of the state legis-
lature, and delegates from organizations of youth and of
unemployed single men.
These latter delegates did not claim that they themselves
required work or relief. They came to present to the vari-
ous public officials the case of those who were looking for
one or the other. They had gone through all the steps of
"putting the heat" on the home visitor, the relief supervisor,
and the local administrator. They had had a sit-down strike,
unsatisfactory to everyone. They had carried their case to
the Central Labor Council, the mayor, the City Council and
the county commissioners, all of whom had called on the
state to take care of the situation.
Finally we all sat down together to dig out, if we could,
the factors in the problem.
THE harvest was over and people who had been working
in the fields and orchards and on the fishing banks were
returning to the city. Among them were several hundred
families from the drought areas who had had jobs during
the harvest season but who now were homeless and desti-
tute. There was also a strike situation with considerable dis-
ruption of normal opportunities for employment. So when,
in addition to all this, word went out that limitation of
funds would require reduction of jobs under WPA it
seemed that indeed "The hand of the Lord was heavy upon
them."
Why, we asked each other, should able-bodied men and
women over sixty-five be cut off WPA? Why should
widows with children be cut off WPA and forced to take
a social security benefit in a much lesser amount? Why
should family men be given the preference over single men
35
and single women ? If all this had to be done because there
wasn't enough money, why wasn't the home relief allow-
ance, to which people must resort, made large enough to
provide for the necessities of life? Why shouldn't there be
three meals a day instead of two at the transient shelters?
Why, in short, should there be categories with their varying
degrees of inadequacy?
THIS and similar discussions have made it obvious, to me
at least, that we must stop thinking about human
beings in terms of categories. Otherwise, we simply are forc-
ing the various groups classified as single men, or blind, or
aged, or transients, or what not, into competition with one
another. It should be clear to all of us, including the bene-
ficiaries of the public assistance program, that the adminis-
trative difficulties and the inequalities of the category sys-
tem are due, primarily, to the failure of responsible
authorities to provide sufficient funds to make the system
operate effectively. It is useless and unfair to "put the heat"
on the visitor, and the supervisor, for bigger and better
assistance, until the legislators and other public officials
provide the revenue necessary for adequate budgets.
The pressure groups really know that social workers do
not want to reduce budgets, deny allowances, or increase
the number of hoops, hurdles and red tape through which
the applicant must go before he obtains assistance. They
know as well as anyone that, the country over, appropria-
tions for old age allowances, unemployment relief, child
welfare, and other forms of public assistance have been too
small to permit grants in the number and to the amount
that social workers felt were necessary. But as good admin-
istrators, social workers have applied the means test a lit-
tle more firmly — denying here, reducing there — in an at-
tempt somehow to make the available money take care of
the most urgent phases of the situation.
Thus the social workers, who had thought that it was
their business to help men and women rehabilitate them-
selves, find that their chief job now is to determine legal
eligibility and rigidly to measure need. Because we have ar-
ranged our budgets on a categorical basis, we find that we
chip a little from old age assistance to take care of the blind
or something from the single men to take care of the minor
child; that we ourselves are engaged in the competition of
the categories for every last dollar of appropriated funds.
There is always the danger that a publicly supported pro-
gram will follow the path of least resistance. We are apt
to think that our program is assured when we have gained
the interest and support of politicians. It is true that most
successful candidates for office last November stood on at
least one plank favoring public assistance or social security.
It is also true that in most states the candidates seemed
more concerned over the needs of persons old enough to
vote than over those below voting age.
Now that these candidates are in office it is time to go
around and claim their promised support for the public
assistance program. But unfortunately we find that promised
support weakened not only by our internal competition, but
by the competition of other socially important programs —
good roads, education, recreation, health, mental hygiene,
libraries, corrections, the development of natural resources
and so on. A legislator may be sincere in his desire to ful-
fill campaign promises on public assistance but he must bal-
ance their fulfillment against all the demands on the total
state budget. Legislators know that close to 85 percent of
our people are taking care of themselves, and that in the
main they are willing to have their representatives work
out some method of taxation to finance aid for the other 15
percent. But the 85 percent see other needs as well — roads,
schools, hospitals, for example — and they have their own
methods of pressing for them.
Our concern as citizens and as social workers is not that
there are pressure groups ; they are natural phenomena, nec-
essary to progress in a democracy. True, their demands are
frequently selfish and unreasonable, their proposed policies
and procedures unworkable and impractical. Yet we may
always hope to find in each pressure group the constructive
agitator who, like Amos of old, turns out to be a prophet.
Our real concern with pressure groups in the public assist-
ance area should be that their self-interest and identification
with particular categories should not becloud the whole
scene. We know from the history of the labor movement
the technique of drawing red herrings across conflicting in-
terests to the end that each accepts small and temporary ad-
vantages which delay, if not prevent, the development of a
sound program.
Long ago we had a type of social worker who was thought
of either as a crank or a crusader. He exhorted from a soap
box, or put his all into the publication of a tract. He gener-
ally worked alone and exhausted himself with the emo-
tional fervor of his own agitation. It is not proposed that
social workers again adopt these methods ; it is obvious how-
ever that they must find a way to promote among the self-
supporting 85 percent of our people a substantial backing
for a better standard of living among the 15 percent in need
of public assistance. One method of promotion is to get
persons from this self-supporting group to act as friendly
visitors and in other ways to come into personal contact with
the people touched by the public assistance services.
But we ourselves, in forwarding our program, must see
it whole and not trade off one category against another, not
become ourselves protagonists for the aged or the blind
while we brush over the needs of children or of families
who fail to fit into any of our pigeon holes.
IT would be smart of us to get all the client pressure
groups together, and candidly discuss the whole situa-
tion. The better understanding which, I am confident, would
result would be most helpful right now as we attempt to
consolidate the gains that have been made under the social
security legislation. Without such understanding it may be
difficult if not impossible to hold ground already won, to
say nothing of making further advances. It is altogether
possible that we ourselves, from such getting together, might
gain fresh notions of how to get our ideas across in places
where they will do the most good.
Is it too much to ask of our legislators and governors that
they insist that those who come to them in behalf of any
single group of beneficiaries should demonstrate that they
have weighed their particular claims in relation to those of
other groups ? Have they weighed the claims of the children,
the handicapped, the aged, the mentally disabled? And
what about the claims of public health, and public educa-
tion?
We must not underestimate the value and importance of
pressure groups. What we should do is to join with them
in finding a way to utilize their full potential strength to
help achieve equal opportunity and well-being for all of
us humans, in or out of the categories. Those of us who
believe in democracy dare to think that with tolerant, pa-
tient and untiring efforts, that goal can be attained.
36
THE SURVEY
Little 'Dobe Homes in the West
By C. W. BURR
Field Representative, California Relief Administration
ALTHOUGH still termed an experiment, the work
program inaugurated last winter by Kern County,
California has advanced so far that even critical
observers grant it the adjectives of promising, practical
and constructive.
After WPA took over its quota from the burdened
relief rolls, Kern County found that it still had upwards
of a thousand men, employable or potentially so, for whom
some provision had to be made until they could find ways
out of their unchosen idleness. The county work program,
financed with state funds, and with state standards of
eligibility and of budgets was the answer. What has made
that program distinctive, we believe, is the constructive
character of the projects undertaken and the fact that the
work is voluntary. We have not gone in for leaf raking
or casual road patching, and no man is forced to work or
starve. He has the opportunity to work out his budgetary
deficiency at prevailing wage rates but he is not obliged
to do so. Of the first 201 men to whom work was offered
189 accepted immediately and eleven gave valid reasons
for their refusal. The two hundred and first man said he
preferred to wait for a private job.
Under our system the county welfare department sets
up and controls the projects, thus enabling quick action
and sustaining local interest. The state ERA stipulates
that projects must be on public property and must be
"worth while." Naturally, projects have been sought
that call for small expenditures for materials and that are
of lasting community benefit. In choosing projects we took
a leaf from the experience of the FERA. Our most am-
bitious completed project is a huge swimming pool in Kern
River County Park. This park of 345 acres, nine miles
from Bakersfield, is largely a product of work relief, the
RFC, CWA, SRA and latterly WPA, all having had a
share in its development. The swimming pool is a contribu-
tion of our county plan, built by men whom WPA left
behind. When one considers that the summer temperature
here is normally above a hundred and that this is the only
free pool in the county, the value of the project to the com-
munity can be appreciated.
Even more interesting to many of us is the project, now
approved by the State Board of Welfare and well under
way, to build houses for old people and for clients of the
county welfare department. Here we are following the lead
of the SRA, which used relief labor under the FERA
program to erect the beautiful adobe structure now hous-
ing the Kern County Welfare Department. The building
cost $47,000, which figure, its architects say, represents
approximately 60 cents on the dollar compared with con-
tract prices. Adobe construction utilizes a maximum of
common labor, not only in the building operation but in the
manufacture of the bricks.
We are using adobe to construct cottages on the grounds
of the Kern County Hospital which will relieve congestion
in the Old Folks Home and afford desirable living ar-
rangements for people for whom congregate care is un-
suited. The county recently purchased five additional acres
for this group of cottages. Water and sewer connections
have been completed and 25,000 or so adobe brick are
cured and ready for building.
Our plan for decent dwellings for clients of the de-
partment is in the same line and more ambitious. This,
also, is approved and ready to go, but was slowed down a
little during the summer, when seasonal employment low-
ered the case load. Here, as elsewhere, the housing of
clients is usually something to be deplored. Yet the county
pays rent, upwards of a thousand dollars a month in all,
for these miserable makeshift shelters.
A project by which relief labor erects attractively de-
signed and inexpensive little houses on property already
owned by the county will, the county supervisors believe,
pay for itself in a short time in the rentals that will be
saved. It is not the intent of the supervisors to build up
colonies of "the poor," or to house in these cottages families
of employable persons temporarily embarrassed by lack of
work. Like it or not the county has a good many cases that
are probably permanent. It is for them that the houses will
be built.
KERN COUNTY is in area almost exactly the size of
Massachusetts. Its principal centers are from thirty
to forty-five miles apart. The county owns parcels of land
in or near these centers and it is on these parcels, in dif-
ferent sections of the county, that the supervisors propose
to erect a sufficient number of decent little adobe dwell-
ings to meet the needs of people in those sections who are
now living in makeshift shacks. The dwellings will be
scattered and will not be colonies, either in appearance or
in fact. The item of rent will appear in a client's budget
as it does now, but it will be paid to the county instead
of to the owner of a place which no human being right-
fully should occupy. Clients will not be removed arbit-
rarily to the new houses, but, given the kind of houses
they are now occupying, the matter of possible vacancies
seems to be nothing to worry about at present. The su-
pervision of the families will be neither more nor less than
that now exercised by the regular case worker of the de-
partment, with the addition of such aid and advice as a
capable visiting housekeeper can give. The county will
require, as any good landlord may of his tenants, a cer-
tain level of maintenance of the homes, but it has no in-
tention of policing them or of institutionalizing the families
who occupy them.
This plan for building houses for clients is just getting
off paper. It is frankly an experiment which may or may
not work, but .until it fails Kern County believes that the
plan holds every prospect of giving real occupation to men
able and willing to work, of turning necessary relief ex-
penditures into improvement in the living conditions of
clients — these or the ones who come after them — and of
giving the taxpayer something to show for his money. A
year from now, maybe sooner, we'll be able to tell Survey
readers the sequel. We know that the project has flaws,
but given current realities we believe it is worth trying.
FEBRUARY 1937
37
What is Worth Saving In
"This Business of Relief"
By DOROTHY C. KAHN
Director, Philadelphia County Relief Board
"The whole operation is carried on variously under the traditional practices
of old line poor officers, or the methods of private charitable societies."
— GERTRUDE SPRINGER in The Survey, December 1936.
HAVE we lived through the agonizing years of de-
pression relief to produce nothing better than this?
The statement quoted, made by a competent
observer, is defended as the by and large truth about the
administration of relief the country over. It presumably
establishes parentage and describes inherited characteristics.
It challenges examination for its basic validity.
When history appraises emergency unemployment relief
during the past six years, it will be apparent, I believe, that
the superhuman and sometimes misguided efforts of the
period were motivated chiefly by a will to achieve a new
method of administering relief, a method that would trans-
late into day by day contacts with millions of persons, the
social philosophy presumably underlying this new provision
for their needs. It is that new method primarily which we
need to preserve and use in all efforts toward social security.
There is an ominous silence about this method, broken
only occasionally, by emotional attacks upon it, by apolo-
getic protestations or by efforts to describe its derivation.
There is a genuine reason for this. It is not unlike the
strange restraint of returned soldiers after the World War.
Workers in the relief field are suffering a kind of intellec-
tual shell shock from which they will recover only through
years of painstaking analysis of the jobs they have been
trying to do. That many of them are ready to devote the
rest of their professional lives to this kind of case work
research, is attested by their activities in staff conferences,
in schools of social work, and in hundreds of individual
projects, seeking to explore not merely the broad economic
aspects of the relief problem, but the meaning of relief and
the way in which it is given to those who must receive it.
It is not enough to dismiss this silent sense of agreement
with a statement that the skills of case work have been used
in the administration of relief. The futility of such an over-
simplification is best illustrated by the fact that a group of
distinguished social workers who recently sat down together
to formulate a statement showing that relief should be
administered by social workers rather than by policemen,
insurance agents, business men or others, shortly gave up
the task because, I am told, they could find no statement on
which they could agree. I do not know whether their diffi-
culties arose from lack of conviction or from .remoteness
from the practical problem. The significant thing is that
they failed. Perhaps a less distinguished group of home re-
lief visitors might have succeeded. But the very formulation
of the problem would have muddied the clarity of thought
and purpose with which they customarily work.
An additional reason for the lack of clear statement about
method in the administration of relief, is to be found, prob-
ably, in the fact that this method is still in the making. Thus
far we are most clear about the things that it is not. The
traditional "practice of old line poor officers" is alien to the
modern relief worker. That practice, it seems, has come to
be an attempt to classify individuals as "poor persons" and
"dependents" in contrast with "taxpayers," that is, self-
sustaining members of society. The poor officer's doctrines
are simple. He is not disturbed in dispensing money by the
indirect nor even by the direct taxes paid by his client. His
methods correspond to his philosophy. Try as you may, you
cannot harmonize that practice with one which derives its
aim from a national purpose to protect people from the re-
sults of a condition over which they have no control, and
to keep them in healthy identification with their fellowmen.
ONE thing is wholly clear. The philosophy of poor relief
tends to create a pauper class. This is perhaps the
chief indictment against it. The philosophy of unemploy-
ment relief has not created and never will create an unem-
ployed class. Perhaps the chief reasons for this lie in individ-
ual "eternal springs of hope," coupled with an indefatigable
will to work, the persistence of which is the psychological
wonder of this age of unemployment. But these factors
alone could not have survived the repressive measures and
the humiliating methods characteristic of old poor relief.
To the private charitable societies belongs credit for the
development of the case work method. But no matter how
great the debt of modern public welfare to the field of vol-
untary social work for this tool, no thoughtful public offi-
cial would contend that its actual use is taken over with-
out adaptation. Too frequently our efforts to convince
skeptics that we "do case work" have betrayed us into over-
identification.
What, then, is this elusive method that seems to defy
positive identification? Here is a subject for a new "social
diagnosis." Pending some such thorough-going study, can
we at least describe some of its properties, distinguish it
from other methods, and explain why this is perhaps the
one item in the emergency relief catalogue of experiment
that is really worth saving? When we say it is primarily
the use of the case work method, do we mean a kind of ad
lib treatment of one case after another, thousands upon
thousands? Is it a kind of therapy attempted as a service
in addition to relief? Is it a series of miscellaneous social
and personal adjustments, undertaken as a sort of justi-
fication for the giving of public funds? Or is it rather a way
of dealing with the relief issue itself — whether relief is
given or withheld — a process which does not damage the
applicant's personal integrity — which, in fact, relieves him
as money alone could not do. We have never wholly suc-
ceeded in taking the bitterness out of the bread of charity;
our case work skills have stumbled over the source of funds.
We have not wholly succeeded in the older forms of public
assistance ; we have stumbled over the categories and the
disabilities. It was not until we were confronted by a wholly
38
THE SURVEY
impersonal disability on a mass scale that the way seemed
clearer. At last we could remove the conflict hetween mass
action and the meeting of individual need.
So long as our social mores tend to associate independence
with dignity and work, it will be psychologically impos-
sible for the recipients of assistance to maintain their per-
sonal integrity unless they can focus on their rights and
not on their disabilities. It makes no difference what these
disabilities are nor how generous may be the compensation
for them. We have sought to make relief respectable by a
complicated system of psychological evasions. We have told
widowed mothers that we were paying them "to care for
their children in lieu of the wages of their husbands," many
of whom, as Florence Kelly long ago pointed out, were pre-
maturely dead of wholly unnecessary and preventable acci-
dents of our social life. We have taught them, in the inter-
est of their widowhood, to apologize for a male visitor, if
not actually to avoid this avenue to independence ! We have
compensated the blind, and made them more dependent
than their disabilities warrant. One could go on and apply
the analysis to work relief.
There is a difference, and not too subtle a one, between
theories of compensation and theories of assistance. 1 am
reminded of the man who once decided to revolutionize the
insurance business by writing a special policy to cover "acts
of God." Are we ready to realize that you cannot compen-
sate people for disabilities without putting a premium on the
disability? It makes no difference whether the compensa-
tion is insurance or assistance. But there is no soul-destroy-
ing permanence in a condition of need. The average business
man suffers no trauma when, on the basis of his credit, he
borrows money for the improvement of his life prospects.
The method that we have learned then in this crisis of
need, is that of reestablishing the social credit of our citi-
zens. Thousands of them have discovered in a brief contact
with a great relief machine, that they did not need to beg.
In spite of all the popular notions about relief, in spite of
our fetishes about dependency, thousands of them, through
an application for assistance, have reestablished themselves
in a responsible relationship to a democratic society. At last
they have something they can do. In the patter of the relief
offices, it is called "participating in establishing one's eligi-
bility for assistance." One applicant, squaring his shoulders
as he left the application department, put it this way: "Well,
I told the family I was coming up here to tell you to take
care of them because I couldn't. I was going to beat it. Now
I guess I'll have to bring home the bacon."
I submit that neither the methods of poor relief nor those
of private charity could produce that result. There is a basic
assumption distinguishing it : the assumption that relief is a
right, not a concession nor a gift. Like other rights, it de-
rives its validity from "consideration of the rights of others."
It is the process of administering relief by which this sense
of right and its corresponding responsibilities has been borne
in upon millions of potential as well as actual recipients of
public funds; it is the process which has kept direct relief
from becoming either a gigantic game of grab or a cure-all
worse than the disease of unemployment. It is a process of
administering relief which does, in short, relieve.
Thus, the modern relief worker and his client find that
they can work constructively within the limitations of the
relief program, even when these limitations are burdensome.
Neither would wish to remove them entirely. The two can
work together to improve the standards that protect them
both, and the society of which they are a part. They learn
to treat need as a matter of determinable fact rather than
as an unmentionable disease. They learn also that the busi-
ness of determining eligibility is not a drawn battle, nor a
bit of ingenious detection, but a mutual social enterprise in
that they distinguish this person or family from the mass,
and then carefully relate them to various, ever changing
provisions for assistance in ways that help as contrasted with
ways that hurt.
There still lies ahead of us the painstaking job of analyz-
ing this way of administering relief. It must be done soon if
we are to avoid, in these days of elusive recovery, a return
to all the ancient confusions of a society built on "property
values versus human values."
Volunteers Venture
By WALLACE W. NORTH
WE are a group of so-called society girls, members of
a national organization, and as such we have done
various types of volunteer welfare work in our
southern town of 60,000. For a number of years we main-
tained a milk station in the factory district, where we dis-
pensed milk to undernourished babies and pellagra patients.
One winter morning in 1934, a young woman came to
our milk station with a baby in her arms and three small
children trudging beside her. On getting her quart of milk,
to be given the baby or divided among the four children as
she saw fit, she said suddenly, "I can't stand it no longer.
Can't you ladies help me? The doctor says I'll die if I git
another baby and I gits one every year. I can't feed what I
got. . . . I'm twenty-four and I ..."
Her story woke us up. We asked ourselves, "Can we go
on year after year doling out too little milk to too many
unwanted babies?" A few aroused members suggested: Let
some other agency dole milk. Let us establish a birth con-
trol clinic supervised by a woman doctor.
A storm of protest followed. The argument among our-
selves went back and forth :
Objection: It would be undignified.
Answer: Not if properly and tactfully handled. What dignity
is there in sponsoring unwanted, underprivileged children?
O. : It is not our business.
A.: Whose then? Are we not our sisters' keepers? Can we call
ourselves charitable and not try to prevent useless suffer-
ing? Shouldn't these women have the same information as
we, when they need it so much more?
O.: Doctors, not society girls, should undertake this work.
A.: Certainly, but they won't. They are waiting for the public
to demand that contraceptive information be made avail-
able at hospitals and clinics.
O. : It is against the law.
A. : Not in this state. This is one of the twenty-seven states
in which birth control clinics may legally be founded. Fed-
eral laws forbid the dissemination of contraceptive infor-
mation through the mails. However, if this law were
FEBRUARY 1937
39
enforced, manufacturing chemists and druggists the coun-
try over would be indicted. We do not favor the indis-
criminate dissemination of this information. We want
clinics under proper medical supervision and restriction.
O. : We might antagonize religious groups.
A.: Not intentionally. Those who have scruples against birth
control need not attend our clinic. They cannot expect to
control the lives of those who sincerely believe otherwise.
O. : This town is too conservative.
A.: It may not be. Let's find out.
We did find out. We formed a committee of ourselves
to investigate the possibility of starting a contraceptive clinic.
At Margaret Sanger's suggestion, the "investigators" inter-
viewed forty physicians in our town. A large majority ap-
proved birth control. Many had "long seen the need" for
such a clinic but had done nothing. Some were ignorant of
recently accepted methods, others indifferent to any method.
The latter, usually the class B doctors, are the kind who
warn a woman that another pregnancy may be fatal, but
fail to instruct her in any method of contraception. We
learned that scientific contraception usually is not taught
in medical schools.
One physician harped on the fact that the rich have too
few children. We replied: "Well-to-do people could have
larger families if they were not so heavily taxed for the sup-
port of dependents and delinquents who generally come from
large, poverty-stricken families." Another doctor insisted,
"The type of woman you are trying to reach is too ignor-
ant to learn contraception." We could not accept his objec-
tion because we knew that many ignorant women try every
method known to the back alleys, risking their lives in an
effort to prevent or end a pregnancy. We answered, "Why
not give them a safe, simple and effective method? Give
them a chance." With a physician who favored big families
we argued (strange that one should have to argue such a
subject with a "guardian of health") : "You will agree that
every woman needs a rest after childbirth. Birth control as-
sures the mother this rest period — in preparation for her
next child, if she wants another." Of greatest assistance to
us was the dean of the State Medical School, which is lo-
cated in our town. He presented our plan to the County
Medical Society, whose members approved it unanimously.
Next we interviewed welfare agencies and readily ob-
tained from each a statement of willingness to cooperate
with us in starting a birth control clinic. The most enthusi-
astic endorsees were the juvenile court, the Family Welfare
Association and the Visiting Nurse Association. Armed
with these endorsements and a copy of the Medical Society's
resolution of approval, the investigating committee returned
hopefully to its timid and disapproving organization. Result:
Organization converted. Result of conversion: Members
surrendered milk doling to another agency and voted one
hundred dollars to pay a part of the expenses of a local
woman physician to go to New York for two weeks' train-
ing in the contraceptive clinics. This special training, given
free, was considered necessary by the medical director of the
American Birth Control League, who met with members
of our committee.
The clinic, which opened its doors August 1934, exactly
six months after our illuminating talk with the young
mother at the milk station, is a part of the out-patient de-
partment of the State University Hospital. We feel very
proud of it as it is the only one of its kind in the state and
one of the few in the South. In addition to the bi-weekly
clinics held in the out-patient department our doctor con-
ducts a clinic once a week in the mill district in rooms pro-
vided by an Episcopal mission. In the near future we plan
to open a clinic in the country for the women of Tobacco
Road — which ought to meet the mind of Erskine Caldwell.
The clinic is open to all married women, white and col-
ored. A fee of one dollar is charged to cover cost of contra-
ceptive material. Often the social agency referring the
patient will pay her fee if she is unable to do so. Prior to
November 1935, when the patient was on relief, Uncle Sam
paid ; gladly, we suppose, since during the four years be-
tween October 1929 and October 1933, 1,616,891 babies
were born on relief, according to figures of the American
Birth Control League. Now the fee of women on relief is
paid by our local family welfare society. Lack of money
never stands in the way of our patients; we dig into our
own pockets if necessary. The clinic was two years old in
August and had served 397 women. Since we pay no rent
or doctors' fees we can function for as little as $30 a year.
The "investigators" became volunteer workers in the
clinic, taking case histories and doing follow-up work. They
also spread the gospel of voluntary motherhood by interview-
ing women who bring their children to the pediatric clinics.
Thanks to our doctor, who gives her services, no patient
leaves the obstetrical ward of the hospital without being
told of the clinic. Special effort is made to encourage women
with venereal diseases to attend the clinic.
There are women living in virtually every community in
this country, who are not within reach of a contraceptive
clinic. Until we include birth control in public health pro-
grams, like the Scandinavian countries, the job of helping
these helpless women to avoid unwanted children has to be
shouldered by the interested persons in their communities.
These Juvenile Courts of Ours
By CHARLES L. CHUTE
Executive Director, National Probation Association
JUVENILE courts generally have not yet measured
up to the high ideals of their founders. Like other
public agencies they have often suffered from a polit-
ically appointed and untrained personnel. They have at-
tempted or have been forced to deal with child and family
cases that could have been treated more effectively by other
agencies and have emphasized legal or court procedure,
even criminal procedure, to the detriment of the children.
Does this mean that the juvenile court has failed? Yes,
in just the same way that our school system has failed ;
that the church has failed; that all social welfare agencies
and our whole economic system of production and distri-
bution have fallen short of their potentialities.
But whatever the shortcomings of juvenile courts, it
must be admitted that a generation of experience and a
great amount of experimentation have not yet succeeded in
developing, anywhere in the country, a new community
agency that can do their work. In a recent candid apprai-
40
THE SURVEY
sal of these courts, [see The Survey, May 1936, page
131] Grace Abbott proposes "neighborhood centers to
which parents could turn for help in child training just
as they have turned to health centers for guidance in the
physical care of infants and pre-school children." But she
does not tell us under what auspices these centers would
be established ; or what authority they would have to treat
delinquent children and neglectful parents. What evi-
dence is there that such "centers," or other agencies that
could be conceived, might not acquire all the faults that
juvenile courts now have, and perhaps others beside? To
me, the conclusion reached by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck
after their critical study of the Boston court is the sounder
one. The Gluecks hold that the juvenile court should be
given greater scope, and above all more adequate personnel,
and should develop a more satisfactory coordination with
clinics and other agencies, in order to take its appropriate
place in the community as the authoritative public agency
dealing not alone with delinquent children and youth but,
equally important, with delinquent parents.
Ai yet there are not enough competent case studies to
justify the statement that the results obtained by juve-
nile courts have been discouraging. Believers in the prin-
ciples back of the courts have hesitated to urge such evaluat-
ing studies because of the great difficulty in arriving at any
sound statistical criteria as to success and failure. It must
be remembered that the only thoroughgoing study yet
made, that of the Gluecks, was confined to one court,
handicapped by limited powers and personnel, working in
a congested, foreign section of Boston. Only the more
difficult delinquency cases, those which had been referred
by the court to the clinic for diagnosis, were included in
the group of cases studied. Primarily, this was a statistical
study. The criterion of success or failure used was re-
cidivism. Boys arrested or convicted of a subsequent offense
of any sort were put down as juvenile court failures.
Those who are in close touch with the work of well
equipped juvenile courts — Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo,
Los Angeles, to mention a few — are not ready to admit
that they are failures or that their work has not shown at
least as many "cures" or reasonably permanent adjust-
ments as any other agency dealing with delinquency.
Every appraisal of the work of a juvenile court or any
other agency should be correlated with the equipment and
personnel of that court or agency. If the work done by a
court in one or a series of cases is deemed a failure, be-
cause of too great a percentage of repeaters, what does it
mean? Is it necessarily proof of the inefficiency of the
juvenile court movement? May it not be evidence that the
judge who dealt with the particular cases was inexperi-
enced; that the case-workers of the court were lacking in
training or skill, or, as often happens, were overburdened
with work? What are the criteria of success or. failure?
Can court treatment, often necessarily brief, and some-
times without proper community backing, be expected so
to condition a youth that he will never again be arrested
or get into trouble?
Many of the faults and shortcomings of juvenile courts
are not inherent in their makeup. Not because they are
called courts is fear and authority in evidence. The same
evils have been noted again and again in school attend-
ance bureaus and even in private child-caring agencies.
Much of the current criticism seems to center on the
judge. It might be well if this ancient and honorable title
could be changed to "director" or some other less fearsome
appellation ; it would be better if judges could accomplish
by their works, as some of them have, a changed public
attitude toward the title. It is true, though it should not
be, that a majority of juvenile court judges begin their
work with no special training or experience, except as
lawyers. The position of juvenile or family court judge
in a community is important and unique. There is no
earthly reason why standards of training and special ability
should not prevail. More than once representative citi-
zens and social workers have succeeded in their demands
for the selection or retention of well qualified judges, as
for example recent appointments or elections in the cities
of Washington, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo.
Organized citizen interest in juvenile courts will al-
ways be necessary, but new legislation also is needed.
The juvenile or family court should be separated from all
other courts with some method for nominating or qualify-
ing the judges. In Utah, where judges are appointed by
a state juvenile court commission, it has been urged that
competitive examinations be held for judges as well as
for probation officers, with definite training and experience
in child welfare work required. There is no real reason
why the judge and every other employe of the juvenile
court should not be placed under civil service.
But let us not over-emphasize the judge. He or she (the
number of women judges is increasing) is chiefly impor-
tant as the administrative head of the court. The actual
decisions in most children's cases, and the treatment in
many of the more progressive courts today, are in the
hands of trained referees or probation officers, aided by the
psychiatric clinic which is an indispensable part of the
court. The clinic should not be considered an auxiliary
service outside the court; it should be a part of the court's
diagnostic and treatment set-up. In Cincinnati's juvenile
court, the estimated 90 percent of cases which involve no
dispute as to custody and no question of commitment to
an institution are dealt with, not by the judge personally,
but by experienced and trained referees and probation
officers, aided by a competent clinic. A judge in another
city recently admitted that not only did he ask for but in
almost every case followed the recommendations of his
chief probation officer and of the referee.
IN four states and parts of two others all probation of-
ficers are selected under the civil service, their posi-
tions being removed largely from the political arena. Can-
not this improvement be extended to all other states?
It must be admitted that much remains to be done
before juvenile courts can attain the ideals of their foun-
ders, but friends of the court and of the child should not
yield to pessimism because of breakdowns and failures in
some of our cities, and of delays in extending the juvenile
court into rural areas. To be discouraged with the struggle
to develop socially efficient courts is to be discouraged
with democracy. The awakened public demand that the
crime problem be solved preventively is an opening for a
direct attack on the lethargy, conservatism and parsimony
which have held back the juvenile courts from full de-
velopment into the social instrumentalities visioned by the
men and women who made the fight for their establish-
ment. Their concept of juvenile courts deserves a fairer,
fuller test than it yet has had. At least some courts have
demonstrated that it is possible to have good courts, too
good certainly to throw away.
FEBRUARY 1937
41
Security Has Its Growing Pains
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
A the fat manila envelope
dropped into the incom-
ing basket, Miss Bailey-
felt a sort of tightening up in
Miss Gilson, the county super-
visor. Until then they had been
chatting with good humored
relaxation about the various
administrative aches and pains
incident to getting old age assist-
ance through to its beneficiaries.
"Will you excuse me if I
look?" Miss Gilson ripped open
the envelope. "These are the
cases back from the state board
of welfare, and if they've chiseled a dollar off old Mrs.
Biggs I'll have a fit right here and now."
Miss Bailey knew about fits like that ; she'd been close to
them herself, many a time, when her own best judgment
and what seemed justice to the client had been overruled by
some remote power-that-be.
"Yes, they've done it." Miss Gilson leafed through the
sheaf of papers. "They've chiseled them all ; old man Johnson
from $25 to $22, Mrs. Coleman from $20 to $19— and
here's Mrs. Biggs, just as I expected, from $18 to $17,
and not a word to tell why. Honestly now ! Every item in
Mrs. Biggs' thin budget was within the limits set by the
state office; and then they lop off a dollar just because they
can't think of anything else to do. Busy work I call it.
And some day I'm going to put on my hat and walk out
on the whole business."
Miss Bailey knew that walkout feeling too, and she knew
that it didn't get you anywhere, even if you walked out —
which you didn't.
"But working out Mrs. Biggs' budget, so long as it is
within the law, is a case work procedure, isn't it? Do you
mean that the state office supervises your case work?"
"That's what it comes to, and by absentee methods and
forms so legalistic that old Mrs. Biggs as a human being is
completely lost. To begin with, our law is thirty printed
pages. Then it is 'interpreted' by the state attorney, and
the state board draws up rules and regulations — here they
are, 150 pages of 'em. Then the county attorney and the
county board — and don't forget the battery of auditors —
do some more interpreting, each in his own way. All wound
round with these interpretations the visitor goes to see old
Mrs. Biggs and gets her story. You'd think that the visitor's
interpretation would have some status, wouldn't you ? But
not at all. Back the story goes through all the levels right
up to the door of the state capitol, and the net result is that
old Mrs. Biggs gets $17 a month instead of $18 — and all
for sweet security's sake. Mrs. Biggs is eighty, and prac-
tically blind — it hardly seems worth the struggle, does it?"
"Tell me about Mrs. Biggs and why that dollar a month
makes so much difference." Miss Bailey had an incurable
passion for seeing procedures in terms of the people whose
lives they touched.
"Well, Mrs. Biggs is as nice a grandma as anybody could
ask for. For years she earned her living as a practical nurse,
Miss Bailey Says . . .
What can a county welfare worker do
when —
The state welfare department, apparently for no
good reason at all, systematically chisels down the
budget of every old age case it reviews?
The required reporting forms are so dry and
legalistic that they shed no light on the human being
behind the case numbers?
but finally had to give up and go
to live with her daughter who
has nine children under twelve
and a husband whose top earn-
ings are $22.50 a week. Believe
it or not, that family has kept
off relief. Oh, a Christmas
basket or a bundle of clothing
from the church now and then,
but that's all. And Grandma is
one of the reasons they've kept
off. She's one of the world's best
managers and those nine kids
show it. They're lively as kit-
tens. When they come home
from school she polices the whole flock of them out of their
decent school clothes into their overalls and flour-sack pina-
fores. Most children raid the cookie jar when they get
home, but you don't have a cookie jar on $22.50 a week,
although you do have an appetite. So Grandma buys for
next to nothing all the small off-size potatoes the grocer
has, scrubs 'em well, and has them piping hot in the oven
ready for the kids to gobble down, skins and all."
"I could tell you a lot more about that family and the
strength that Grandma is to it. But to get on — like so
many of the old folks she thought this was a government
pension of $30 a month, just because she was old. Why,
we had a woman in here only last week, all done up in a
fur coat, who lives in one of our better apartment hotels.
She had decided to take the pension, she said, because with
it she could give bigger tips to the hotel help, especially the
boy who walks her dog. When we explained that this was
assistance, budgeted according to need, she was furious; said
it was just like the politicians, always deceiving people."
"Come on back to Mrs. Biggs." Miss Bailey was not to
be led afield.
, when we explained about budgeted need she
reared up, said her family had never taken charity,
but with so many children and all, she knew she was a
burden.
"We explained some more and finally took her applica-
tion. Proof of eligibility was easy, but when it came to
budgeting we had the old lady's family pride to deal with
as well as the labyrinth of regulations about old folks liv-
ing with self-supporting children. After figuring this way
and that we arrived at $18 a month as covering Mrs. Biggs'
proper sjiare in the household of which she was so useful a
part. Only then did she make any claim for herself. 'Would
it be all right' she asked, 'if I kept a dollar of that for my-
self, so I could go to church on Sundays, and once in a
while, in the summer, ride out to the park to hear the band
play?' And then the higher-ups chisel off a dollar!"
"But I don't understand. I've read your law, and surely
it gives the county power, within certain limitations, to
determine the award?"
"Yes, it does, but it also reserves to the state very broad
powers of regulation. By the time these powers have been
interpreted back and forth and colored with up-state and
42
THE SURVEY
down-state political jealousies the net result is that the state
office passes on each and every item of every case."
"But what duplications; what lack of confidence by one
arm of government in another."
"You're telling me?" Miss Gilson was bitter. "The
trouble begins when the visitor transfers Mrs. Biggs' story
to the forms prescribed by the state. Every drop of human-
ity is squeezed out of it ; it becomes as dry as hardtack.
That mightn't be so bad if we had, reviewing the records at
the state office, the same type of mind and of experience
that assembles them. But we haven't. In this county the
old age assistance workers were handpicked from the relief
organization. They were recruited by a merit system, and
as soon as certain formalities are put through they will have
civil service status. Our workers have background and a
lot of practical, seasoned experience. They know what to
look for in a situation and how to weigh all the factors,
including those that do not meet the naked eye. They
respect human beings and they take seriously that part of
our stated purpose which is 'to evaluate the individual needs
of the applicant, both economic and social, and to plan for
his future on a basis in which his interest is the paramount
consideration.' See, there it is in the book — first page.
"Those are the people who make the budgets. Naturally
a social attitude is reflected, even to the extent of a dollar
or so for 'social needs' as the rules permit. Then what hap-
pens? The records go to the state office and are turned over
to readers whose only qualification for the job is that they
are the sisters or the brothers or the uncles or the aunts of
someone who is 'right with the party.' They make no bones
about it. There is no required standard of education or
experience; a social attitude to them is just a couple of words.
"Some of them read records for eligibility requirements,
and some for budgets. The purpose, so far as our months
of experience indicate, is to grind down allowances to the
last possible penny, and, I strongly suspect, not to let those
slick city social workers get away with anything. Eligibility
is comparatively easy to pass upon. It's all in the law and
the proofs either meet the law or they don't. But budgets are
different — judgment comes in — and that's where they get
us. The judgment of the person who knows old Mrs. Biggs
in her own setting goes down before that of the person who
knows her as a number. He has to do something to justify
his job, so he saves the sovereign state a dollar a month,
and old Mrs. Biggs loses her dime for the collection plate
and her chance to hear the band play in the park."
surely they aren't all dumb in the state office?
Someone there must know this situation and want to
straighten it out?"
"Oh they know about it all right, and given the bald
realities of practical politics I don't suppose one should be
too bitter. Our pressures are from the clients and from
within ourselves as a result of our knowledge of the clients.
The state officials are pressed by the taxpayers and by their
political machine. The job itself, old Mrs. Biggs for ex-
ample, must somehow be wangled in between the two. If
there were some painless, politically safe way to get more
money there wouldn't be this constant chiseling down of
the meager old age budgets. If we had a merit system for
the security services, from the state office right down
through the counties, we should get something approaching
standards in personnel — at least the state and county staffs
would speak the same language. Civil service isn't the whole
answer to personnel, but it's a mighty good place to start."
"I should think," Miss Bailey looked Miss Gilsori
squarely in the eyes, "that you would be tempted to shade up
these budgets since you're pretty sure that they're going to
be shaded down at the state office."
"S-s-sh," Miss Gilson dropped her voice, "I might as well
come clean. We weren't born yesterday. Mrs. Biggs will
hear the band play. The seventeenth dollar will do the
trick. The eighteenth was — you know — a trading margin.
But it's the principle that burns me up — and as for the
ethics. . . ."
Miss Bailey made the little murmur that meant "Judg-
ment suspended," and Miss Gilson went on.
«TT .TE'VE learned another little way too, that isn't in
' ' the book. As I told you the forms are as dry as
hardtack — not a chance for a human personality to come
through. But we've discovered that if by accident a loose
sheet with a summary of the case gets caught in the record,
that sheet gets read, and if it tells a simple human story,
that case is pretty apt to go through as recommended. We
don't overdo the accidental enclosure, but it does work."
"Maybe there's an opening here for a good sob-story
writer," Miss Bailey put in hopefully.
"Not at all," Miss Gilson countered, "they're not sob
stories. They're the human facts behind the formal record.
That they get over as they do seems to me to indicate that
the people at the state office are just folks like the rest of us.
If they — and this goes for the legal lights and the auditors
and all the rest of the watchdogs as well as for Mr. and
Mrs. Public — could know as we do the old men and women
behind the case numbers, we'd all begin thinking in terms
of how much we could do for our helpless old folks and not
how little. We'd all feel ourselves part of a human service —
not just job holders."
Out in the wintry twilight, automatically dodging traffic,
Miss Bailey, observer without portfolio of the social scene,
cogitated on what she had heard. Here was a local unit,
backbone of the whole interlocking federal-state-county sys-
tem. It had the social philosophy and the standards of per-
formance that — if she knew her Washington, and she
thought she did — met the intent at the top. And yet it was
driven to devious practices because, in between, intervened
a state authority wound round with political distrusts.
Miss Bailey believed that there had to be standards at the
top. "But why level down the progressive counties?" she
asked herself. "Why force them to something that repre-
sents the least common social denominator of the state ? Why
not let each county work out its practices in relation to the
client in terms that the people of that particular county will
understand and accept? If the practices in one county are
different from another, what of it — so long as the adminis-
trative procedures are in order. What we need from the top
is freedom to do as well as we know how, with a constant
infiltration of incentive and of education to show us how to
do better. Meantime we are having our growing pains."
Well, tomorrow would be another day. Only two hours
away was a state with standards and civil service personnel
and all the rest of it at the top, and practically no regulations
anywhere else. "Let's take a look at how they're managing
their assistance to dependent children," said Miss Bailey.
This is the second of the new series of articles in which
the veteran "Miss Bailey" sums up the results of her first
hand observations over the country and of her discussions
with workers close in to the actual operation of the social
security services. Next month — Children Aren't Trash.
FEBRUARY 1937
43
BEHAVIOR AS IT IS BEHAVED- IV
Goldie and Gracie Step Out
By ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE
GOLDIE and Gracie lived next
door to one another. They were
born the same year, wore each
other's clothes, and were both at the
point where they could not endure for
another day the school in which they did
equally poor work.
As little girls they had been easy enough
to manage. In their early teens they both
developed so rapidly that by the time they
were fifteen they could pass, physically,
for twenty-one. With this bodily growth
had come rebellion against all parental
restraint, and complete lapse of attention
toward such matters as the area of a
parallelogram, or the eloquence of Portia.
At fifteen Goldie and Gracie had no
interest whatsoever in anything which dis-
tracted them from their one absorbing
passion — BOYS. The fascinations of the
male of the species had descended upon
both girls with such violence that nothing
in life mattered if it hampered the free
exercise of this one instinct. They liter-
ally never mentioned another topic when
in each other's presence, which was prac-
tically twenty-four hours a day. They
made eyes at every male they passed, and
discussed his response in detail until they
met the next one. In vain did their
mothers scold them, their fathers wait for
them with a strap, and the truant officers
present their papers. The two girls re-
garded all reprimands as merely the jeal-
ous ravings of those who, lacking charm
and sex appeal themselves, sought to curb
it in those more fortunate.
Escaping from school or not going at
all, they perched on stools at hot-dog
stands, on old tires at the repair shop, in
THE URGE TOWARD SEX EXPRESSION
HAVE you ever observed adolescents "suddenly" become sex-conscious?
Do you think that all 'teen age young people are about as sex-sensitive
as Goldie and Gracie? Are they necessarily less so because they do not express
it so openly? Is it over-statement to say that young people are dominated
largely by sex drive. At what age do they stop being so?
Is it possible to say within normal limits, that anyone is "over-sexed"?
Were Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Abie and his Irish Rose, over-
sexed? Is there any measure of proper sex interest? Is the expression of this
interest with both boys and girls a matter of cultural standard?
Is it possible or desirable to lessen sex drive? If so, how? Do you feel
that your own sex interest was handled properly at this age? How? How not?
Do you believe that sex interest coincides with and is absent before and
after glandular maturity? Could anything have been done to prepare Goldie
and Gracie for this sex absorption? What? Was it unmixed sex that motivated
their conduct, or sex combined with boredom, lack of intellectual tastes, the
tradition of early marriage, egotism, physical energy, lack of home recreation,
and so on? Do you consider their conduct "healthy"? Why? Why not?
Do you believe that according to circumstances the same sex endowment
might develop into respectable family life or into prostitution? Do you believe
that society is as ready to admit the force of sex drive as it is the force of
hunger or the desire to live? Why is it customary to try to curb it by censure
or ridicule? Must it be curbed at all? Why? Is it less of a problem in
primitive society? Why? Why is it a problem in our society?
SUGGESTED READING:
MARGARET MEAD: GROWING Up IN NEW GUINEA.
COMING op AGE IN SAMOA.
SIGMUND FREUD: A YOUNG GIRL'S DIARY.
SHELDON AND ELEANOR GLUECK: FIVE HUNDRED DELINQUENT WOMEN.
F. H. LUND: EMOTIONS op MEN.
LEONARD K. TROLAND: FUNDAMENTALS OP HUMAN MOTIVATION. Chapter 23. Sexual
Motivation.
empty chairs at the barber shop, on drain
pipes beside construction gangs, there to
prattle and cackle about nothing until
someone drove them off. They played off
one exasperated family against the other,
sleeping in entries if they were locked
out and climbing out of windows if they
were locked in, only to fly to each others
arms and steal away to hunt new romance
in some lumber yard or railroad station.
A new gasoline station building in the
outskirts of town thrilled them beyond
words. They could think of nothing else.
Who was to operate it? Some one they
knew or a stranger? Would he be young,
handsome, or — horrid thought — married?
Would there be — blissful prospect — two
men, so that each girl could have one to
herself?
Until the station was finished they be-
set the workmen with questions. When it
opened, with two good-looking, mannerly
young men in charge, Goldie and Gracie
definitely scratched school off their list and
settled down to enjoy themselves. Adorned
with fresh make-up, generously applied,
they approached their heroes and found
out the facts — which were exactly to their
mind. The two attendants were brothers
from the country, entirely unacquainted
in the neighborhood. They lived together
in a rooming house, with strangers.
Nothing could have been more pleasing to
the sirens; no rivals, no family to inter-
fere, no place for the men to go but the
gas station and their lonely room.
The fruit seemed ripe for the picking,
and the girls began to pick, but with such
pertinacity and such lack of reserve that
the boys, inexperienced as they were, be-
gan to get a little nervous. It was flatter-
ing of course to be found so attractive,
but it was not so good when their admir-
ers' attentions were so untiring that the
young men could hardly get rid of them,
day or night. The girls appropriated the
only two chairs in the office, hid in the
washroom at the approach of an acquaint-
ance, interfered with service to customers,
distracted the boys when they worked at
their accounts, and demanded so many
sandwiches, bottles of soda-pop and cigar-
ettes, that their hosts decided their com-
pany was too dearly bought, and tried to
send them home.
"See here, kids," began Gus plaintively.
"We're getting worried about you being
here all the time. It'll make talk. You
better go home before the cops get you.1'
The girls merely hooted and settled them-
44
THE SURVEY
selves more firmly in their chairs. Then
Matt took it up and refused to buy them
any more sandwiches.
"We're short as it is," he told them.
"We've fed you three days, and that's
enough. Go on home and get a square
meal."
"Ain't got any home," sniffled Gracie,
trying to squeeze out a tear. "They kicked
us out."
"I don't blame 'em," grumbled Gus.
"Better go, because you're going to get
kicked out of here too."
But the girls didn't go, and neither
Matt nor Gus was quite willing to ad-
minister the kicks, although by now they
would have liked nothing better.
CO the fourth day wore on, with the
^ girls more and more frowsy and un-
kempt, from absence of any toilet aids but
a compact and pocket comb. They knew
that their families must be hunting for
them. But so far they had eluded detection,
creeping home late to sleep in their own
garages, and slipping out early to hide
around the gas station until the harassed
Gus and Matt arrived to open up. At
last the boys decided to ignore completely
the unwelcome guests who had settled
upon them like old men of the sea. They
said neither "Good morning" nor "By
your leave." When they wanted one of
the chairs, they gripped it firmly by the
back and ousted its occupant. They
laughed at no sallies, bought no sand-
wiches, and kept the girls in the washroom
for half an hour at a time by conversing
with the local policeman, whom, they well
knew, neither girl cared to face.
Finally, after one of these sessions, the
girls did not reappear. The boys ap-
proached the washroom gingerly, and
found the door ajar and the room empty.
They were free at last! Delighted at their
release they laughed and joked at the
prospect of a day without the incubus of
the two boisterous, strident girls. This
was their first evening off and they had
planned to celebrate by going to a mid-
night movie, to which, despite blandish-
ments, they steadfastly had refused to buy
tickets for Goldie and Gracie. But when
the gas station closed for the night, they
realized that, greasy as they were, they
must race home before going to the
theatre and change into the only clean
clothes they owned. Arriving at their
rooming house, breathless and full of
high spirits, they found their landlady
waiting at the foot of the stairs.
"Your sisters are up there in your
room," she said with a chilly look.
"Our sisters? What are they doing
here? Anything wrong at home?" the
boys asked in an amazed duet.
"The way they've been carrying on all
afternoon, I don't believe anything's
wrong at home." The landlady grimly
followed them upstairs. "What's more, I
don't believe they're your sisters, and 1
never did," she added.
The young men stared at each other in
horror. They suspected the worst but had
no idea what to do next. It was too late
to put two girls out on the street. It was
against their code to turn them over to
the police. On the other hand, they had
set their hearts on going to the show,
and they had no intention of taking the —
by this time — detestable Goldie and
Gracie. But how could they go in their
greasy overalls?
'Gosh, we got to have our clean pants,"
muttered Gus.
"Try and get "em," said Matt with a
helpless grimace.
Then as laughter shrilled from the
other side of the door, both boys lost their
tempers. With one accord, they pushed
open the door and burst in, intending to
snatch their clothes and bolt out again.
But it did not work that way. Hardly
over the threshold they bumped full tilt
into a line of wet clothing strung across
the room. Behind it their guests, giggling,
were waiting for them. The girls had
made the most of their afternoon, and had
washed all their own clothes, inside and
out, and were now ready to welcome the
owners of the shirts and trousers, in
which they themselves securely and re-
lentlessly sat!
"You give us our pants," shouted Gus
and Matt. "How can we?" bantered their
tormentors, pointing to the dripping line.
"Put on your own clothes, wet or dry,
or we'll call the cops," yelled the boys.
"If you call 'em, we'll say you brought
us here, and locked us in. And where'll
your gas business be then?" the girls
shouted back, their tempers also rising.
This was a dilemma and the boys
stared at each other, at the girls, and
then in desperation at the landlady who
scowled from the door. Then with one
accord they turned and bolted down to
the street. The landlady's query followed
them.
"Are they your sisters or ain't they?"
"Hell, no!" they roared back, a com-
mon intuition prompting them to leave the
women to fight it out. Breathless but
safe behind the door of the gas station
they conferred together. Prudence, not
entertainment, was their dish. Even the
loss of their pants, their razors, and their
underclothes, to say nothing of the show,
would be a small price to pay for free-
dom from persecution. Until they had
evidence that the girls were put out or
starved out, they decided to remain ex-
actly where they were.
Curled on the cold floor, with romance
securely locked out, the unwilling charm-
ers fell asleep.
This is the fourth in a series of sketches
described by the author in her introduc-
tion as "life occurrences without labels."
[See THE SURVEY, 'November 1936, page
333.] The fifth, The Andersons Reform,
will appear in March. The sketches
are from an unpublished book. Selections
for SURVEY publication, their order and
arrangement are by the editors.
International
IN the news last month were (above, left to right) Luther H. Gulick of New York
and Charles E. Merriam and Louis Brownlow (chairman) of Chicago who, as the
President's Committee on Administrative Management, prepared the plan for the
reorganization of the machinery of government submitted to Congress by the Presi-
dent. The plan would add to the present ten Cabinet departments two new ones,
Public Welfare and Public Works. Within the twelve, a great number of administra-
tive agencies, new and old, would be regrouped by the President. The merit system
would be greatly extended with the present Civil Service Commission replaced by a
single administrator and an unpaid board. Other parts of the plan would add to the
President's staff and would realign responsibilities in accounting and auditing.
FEBRUARY 1937
45
&&
^^$;i::-.:^r|gpr :-'^"^^^m
Fitzpatrick in the 5V. /-oin'.t Post-Dispatch
Unfinished Business
The Common Welfare
The Floods
A3AIN runaway rivers put America to the test in the
greatest disaster since the World War. The calamity
extends far beyond the inundated districts. Yet it is a
heartening demonstration of our interdependence to see the
whole nation respond to the needs of the river communi-
ties. Federal, state and local governments ; army, national
guard and police ; volunteers and trained experts from
every public and private social agency — all pooled their
resources. Down the Mississippi, the planned evacuation
of half a million threatened individuals, the greatest move-
ment of people in American history, stirred not only pity
for the refugees but admiration for the able men and women
who organized and supervised the migration of entire com-
munities to security beyond the threatening tide. Never be-
fore in a peacetime emergency has the Red Cross faced its
job with such an abundance of cooperation. Cincinnati,
for example, under the absolute direction of City Manager
C. A. Dykstra, proved that no ordeal can shatter its civic-
minded approach to its problems. Practically every social
worker in the city has been working on flood relief under
the Red Cross. There, as elsewhere, WPA workers are
mopping up the streets and repairing public structures as
the Red Cross swings into the difficult job of rehabilitating
stricken families. Some Kentucky cities have been less for-
tunate— Frankfort, for example, where the crowded state
penitentiary was the scene of a riot before the prisoners
were belatedly evacuated ; Louisville, where havoc was in-
creased by fire and fear of pestilence. The colossal job of
rehabilitation will proceed with greater efficiency in the
larger cities where well developed medical and social ser-
vices can supplement Red Cross and federal assistance. Back
of the levees, the scattered rural folk are bound to be a
more enduring problem. Temporary relief, even restoration
of their homes, is as thin a barrier against inexorable
poverty as a sandbag against the turbulent might of the
Mississippi.
We have improved our techniques for dealing with the
immediate aftermath of sudden disaster. But flood control
through a land and water conservation program has not
yet got under way. Federal funds have been authorized.
The states must meet their share. Must it take more catas-
trophes to demonstrate the logic and economy of the long
range investment?
Man-made Disaster
A 5 this is written (January 28) the floods have al-
most washed from the front pages the man-made
disasters which are paralyzing other communities. In Gen-
eral Motors plants, the Committee on Industrial Organ-
ization is trying out labor's new weapon, the sit-down
strike. General Motors, with a long record of opposition
to labor unions, has switched from participation in con-
ferences with union representatives, to refusal to come
again to the conference table until the strikers leave the
plants. Attempts at mediation and conciliation, first in
Lansing, then in Washington have repeatedly broken
against the mutual distrust of workers and employers.
The auto strikes, maritime strikes on both coasts, strikes of
glass workers, rumblings in coal and steel — these are all
expressions of labor's present dissatisfaction and unrest.
Such stirrings always characterize a period of recovery
when, taking advantage of a reviving labor market, work-
ers strike to regain ground lost under the pressure of hard
times, and to secure a fair share of rising profits. But with
the increasing complexities of the machine age, labor trou-
bles are no longer private disputes between employer and
worker. Public convenience, safety and well being are more
and more dependent on the orderly flow of goods and
services. What is happening now in the auto towns raises
significant questions as to how much modern mediation
and conciliation machinery we have, how it works, what
more we need to bring industrial relations abreast of power-
age mechanization, and to forestall these shocking disloca-
tions of family and community life. These questions will
be explored in the March Survey Graphic by William
Leiserson, head of the National Mediation Board, the
body which has helped bring peace to the railroads where,
in spite of hundreds of serious disputes there has been no
major strike in the past two years (see page 54).
Food and Drugs Again
E.ST year Congress missed its chance to give the
country an adequate pure food and drugs law. Bills
and their amendments on this dynamitish subject, inti-
mately related to pocketbook strings and to interests of
great advertising and manufacturing lobbies, provoked acute
controversy and finally died of it. The fatal issue was
which of two government agencies should enforce provi-
sions relating to advertising. A last minute compromise
offered by Senator Royal S. Copeland of New York,
sponsor of last year's Senate bill, would have given to the
Food and Drugs Administration of the Department of
Agriculture, control over advertising provisions which might
affect health, and to the Federal Trade Commission au-
thority over provisions relating to fair trade practices. This
passed the Senate but after a storm of objections, lobby
activity and confusion in the House, died in conference.
Today the Food and Drugs Administration must pro-
ceed tediously through its two chief powers : multiple
seizures of goods which, by lengthy process, must be proved
illegal for every separate case; and legal action against
the producer for mislabelling. Then, unless the Federal
Trade Commission chooses to proceed against this same pro-
ducer, he may — and often does — still transfer the chal-
lenged claims from his labels to his advertising and go
merrily along.
In the course of the attacks on last year's bill, attempts
were made to weaken even the powers now possessed by
the administration. One amendment would have cancelled
the multiple seizures provision and substituted an econom-
ically painless sort of "sampling." Another provided that
adjudication of such seizures be lumped and tried, not at
the various points of seizure, but at the point of origin,
where the product involved may be the major local industry.
47
New bills have been introduced this year by Senator
Copeland and by Representative Vergil M. Chapman of
Kentucky. Meantime government reorganization may
change the entire complexion of the situation. In any case
there will be hearings, conflict and hot discussion, and the
Congressional ear will be sensitized to the consumer-voter
voice. Important points for food, drugs and cosmetic legis-
lation "with teeth" are summarized in a resolution of the
1936 convention of the American Federation of Labor, giv-
ing official endorsement to such legislation with the proviso
that it ( 1 ) in no way restrict the government's power to
seize and remove from the market any deceptive or dan-
gerous produce; (2) does not hamper adjudication of such
seizures by requiring their trial in jurisdictions prejudicial
to consumer interest; and (3) grants to the Department of
Agriculture full punitive power to regulate food, drug and
cosmetic advertising.
The Time to Act
NOW is the time for all good men and women to
come to the aid of the child labor amendment. Nine-
teen state legislatures meet this year. One state, Kentucky,
has already moved over into the "ratified" column [see
page 50]. After experience under the NRA codes, public
opinion is apparently ready for the federal control of child
labor, according to a national poll by the American Insti-
tute of Public Opinion in May 1936. [See Survey Graphic,
January 1937, page 10.] Yet only a constitutional amend-
ment, Supreme Court decisions indicate, can give Con-
gress power to protect girls and boys from exploitation,
and at the same time remove children from an over-
crowded labor market. Public opinion, if it makes itself
sufficiently articulate, will secure the needed eleven ratifi-
cations, and put the amendment into the Constitution.
Gaining Ground
EVERY once in a while a valiant band of crusaders gets
a break instead of the customary kick. After years of
being balked by federal law, the National Committee on
Federal Legislation for Birth Control and its sisters in
the fight recently were handed such a surprise. The U. S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that
Section 305-a of the Tariff Act of 1930 — which is legitimate
heir to the so-called Comstock Act of 1873 — "embraced only
such articles as Congress would have denounced as im-
moral if it had understood all the conditions under which
they were to be used," and that its design "was not to
prevent the importation, sale or carriage by mail of things
which might intelligently be employed by conscientious and
competent physicians for the purpose of saving life or pro-
moting the well being of their patients."
Morris Ernst, attorney for the birth control interests in
the test case, told social and medical experts attending the
committee's recent Conference on Contraceptive Research
and Clinical Practice that the decision "hands down to the
medical profession its bill of rights in the field of contra-
ception. The court's decision marks the successful termina-
tion of a sixty-year struggle to make clear that the federal
obscenity laws do not apply to the legitimate activities of
physicians. That a doctor may now prescribe a contracep-
tive in the interests of life and health, symbolizes a notable
victory."
Still another straw in a favorable wind for birth control
advocates is seen in the recent poll announced by the Amer-
ican Institute of Public Opinion, on the question, "Should
the distribution of information on birth control be made
legal?" Seventy percent of the "representative citizen
voters" in the poll said "yes," and favored modification of
the Comstock law to that end.
Changing the Security Act
EVERY householder knows how even "the perfect
house," once actually occupied, develops defects and
lacks. "We do need that extra closet!" "Why did we cut
the door there?" And then the "fixing up" begins. Sim-
ilarly, every country which has built itself a security pro-
gram has found "getting a law" only a first step. In this
country, numerous proposals to modify the new Social
Security Act or its administration have already been in-
troduced in Congress, or are being prepared. Thus, ap-
parently, there will be an effort to change the present
fifty-fifty matching of federal and state funds for old age
assistance to a formula which takes into consideration need
and available tax resources. Similarly, the problem of the
merit system in local administration seems to call for more
adequate answers than the law at present provides. In the
March Survey Graphic, Glen Leet of the American Public
Welfare Association will define these and other suggested
lines of change.
And So On ...
STUDENTS of government, not to mention politicians
are watching with interest the functioning of Ne-
braska's new one-house, 43-man legislature, first of its kind
in the country. The plan, fathered by Senator George W.
Norris, is expected to expedite action and discourage buck-
passing and lobbying. • • A committee of the Washing-
ton State Bar Association is conducting a referendum
among lawyers on its recommendation to legalize the
whipping post for certain felonies. A woman justice of the
peace would modify the proposal by stipulating that women
should whip women and men whip men, with citizens
drawn for the job as for jury duty. • • In England
today, probably the world's most elaborate program against
poison gas attacks is being prepared by the government,
through its air raids precautions department and medical
and police units. In five Scandinavian capitals, on a recent
fete day, children gathered to sing each other's national
anthems while cathedral bells and radio filled the air with
messages of mutual sympathy and respect. • • What with
recovery and all, the Marriage Brokers Association of the
United States has "found it possible" to raise from $25 to
$50 the initial fee of young men looking for wives with
dowries. If recovery continues, the association next year
will raise the minimum of $200 now charged when a
marriage is arranged. • • A new Alabama law, which
makes burglary of an occupied residence at night a capital
offense, had its first application in the case of James Thomas,
Negro. A jury, after hearing a strong plea for the death
penalty, found Thomas guilty and fixed his sentence at life
imprisonment. The amount of his theft was $1.50. • •
Some $50 million of the fortune of the late Charles Hayden
of New York will revert to a new foundation "to educate
and advance American youth, morally, mentally and
physically." Half a dozen professors at Teachers College,
queried as to the most effective direction for the under-
taking, were unable to find a point of agreement.
48
THE SURVEY
The Social Front
WPA
A LTHOUGH the general program
of the Works Progress Administra-
tion shows every evidence of continuation,
possibly at a somewhat restrained tempo,
influential groups and special interests are
wide apart as to the real needs of the
situation. President Roosevelt asked for
$790 million, a sum arrived at, apparent-
ly, in consideration of a still hypothetical
maximum of two million workers in
WPA jobs, which he indicated as desira-
ble in his first message to the new Con-
gress. Of the $790 million, $650 million,
he hopes, will carry WPA to July 1, with
the remaining $140 million to be held, as
a "reserve" against contingencies.
A contingency of unexampled propor-
tions became a grim reality while the de-
ficiency bill was still in Congress. The
floods in the Ohio and Mississippi val-
leys, with their inevitable sequellae of
human dislocation and continuing need,
will require relief measures which can-
not be estimated now, with the extent of
the disaster still undetermined. Only one
thing is certain — great sums of money
will be needed. Neither the President nor
Harry L. Hopkins, WPA administrator,
is of a temperament to count cost in the
face of calamity. Both have made it clear
in word and action that every resource
of men and money would be thrown into
the devastated regions.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors, laud-
ing the philosophy and accomplishments
of WPA and emphasizing its importance
to city relief situations, went on the rec-
ord with a demand for a work relief ap-
propriation of $877,500,000 for the period
February 1 to June 30, contending that
the figure of 2,200,000 workers on WPA,
as of December 31, fails to take into
account an additional half million needy
employables who should be provided for.
Covering all these at an average of $65
per month per worker, the mayors made
their estimate. Granting complete local
responsibility for unemployables, they
point out that even this more than drains
the relief resources of many cities, and
that the cities have shared in WPA to
18 percent of the costs and in PWA to
55 percent. They went on record, also,
as opposing additional federal appropria-
tions as grants for direct relief to
localities.
While the appropriation bill was
pending, delegations from the Workers'
Alliance marching on Washington in
orderly style, were received by the Presi-
dent's secretaries, representatives of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and "liberal"
members of Congress, who heard the alli-
ance's case for $1,040,000 to finance WPA
for the remainder of the fiscal year. A
minimum of $40 a month for all workers,
and raises in pay for those now getting
more than $40 were asked, together with
assurance of continued WPA employment
and the addition to the rolls of around
600,000 "needy employables."
New York's contingent of the Wash-
ington marchers raised funds for their
trip by selling 5 and 10 cent stamps
bearing the slogan, Work and Progress is
Americanism. Thirty-five floats made for
a recent New York protest parade were
used in the Washington march.
Two Points — The New York Post has
presented its platform for WPA in two
unequivocal planks:
1. No WPA employe should be fired
just because "business is improving." He
should be taken off the rolls when he gets
a job in private industry. No firing in
blocks, but automatic dismissal of individ-
uals as the individual outgrows need for
WPA.
2. For each WPA dismissal, a man or
woman should be taken off home relief
and given a job to carry out President
Roosevelt's program of "preserving
morale" and of easing the load in states
and cities.
Viewpoints — It took Louis Stark of
the New York Times, to point out a
distinction with a vital difference, in WPA
terminology, i.e. employability as distinct
from productivity. In a recent series of
articles, Mr. Stark combined keen analysis
with a journalistic survey of the nation's
unemployment and relief situation. Said
Mr. Stark:
"WPA investigations reveal large num-
bers of persons on relief who have
physical and other defects making them
WHAT, gentle reader, do you
think of this whole department,
Social Front — its coverage, its interest,
its usefulness in this digest form? It
has now been appearing for a year and
is subject to critical examination for its
virtues and defects, a process in which
we seek the candid comment of readers.
We spare you a questionnaire; we ap-
peal for your postcard comment. If you
don't read it regularly say so — and
why. Please — promptly. — THE EDITORS
unemployable or only semi-employable.
The tendency by relief officials is to class
as many persons as possible as employ-
able or semi-employable on the assumption
that all those capable of any work, no
matter how light, were entitled to receive
work for reasons of health and morale.
The employer necessarily regards employ-
ability from the standpoint of the worker's
ability to produce.
"In this phase of the relief problem,
and in many others, there appears to be
a sharp conflict between the viewpoint of
social workers, relief administrators and
persons on relief on one side, and the busi-
ness groups which criticize the relief and
work relief programs."
Relief
AN experiment in sharing with clients the
job of establishing their eligibility for
relief has been recommended — with many
careful stipulations — by the Pennsylvania
State Emergency Relief Administration to
local units. The suggested new intake
procedure is based on "the general prin-
ciple that it is fundamentally sound" to
place more responsibility upon the appli-
cant for relief, and is seen as a possible
means of expediting intake for reduced
staffs. The SERA points out that the
experiment should be undertaken only
after careful consideration and consulta-
tion with local boards and staff.
Under the new plan, responsibility is
placed on the client for hunting out and
presenting a long list of evidences of
eligibility such as usually are dug out by
the investigator. Among items which cli-
ents are requested to produce are:
Names and addresses of three com-
panies or persons from whom they have
tried to get work before making this appli-
cation for assistance.
National Reemployment Service iden-
tification cards showing registration of all
employable persons in the client's family.
Report on ownership of motor vehicles
form, completed filled out.
All insurance policies of the family, old
and new, including lapsed policies. Any
papers relative to loans or policies and
premium receipt books.
And so on to include equally detailed
data regarding stocks, bonds, securities,
military discharge papers, bank books,
deeds, rent receipts.
"In general, applicants have been eager
to assume responsibility for presenting
documentary evidence to establish their
eligibility," says an official SERA bulle-
tin, adding: "It has been noted that, with
the acceptance of joint responsibility for
establishing eligibility . . . better visitor-
FEBRUARY 1937
49
recipient relationship has been estab-
lished." It is suggested that skilled inter-
viewers, careful interpretation to the com-
munity and an experimental approach are
essential to the new plan.
Relief by Clothing— New York City's
Emergency Relief Bureau spent $600,000
for clothing during last December. The
total of ERB clothing expenditures dur-
ing 1936, plus donations from the state
Temporary Emergency Relief Adminis-
tration and the Works Progress Adminis-
tration, reached $4,883,000. Of this, $2,-
200,000 came from the ERB, either as
relief-in-kind, or as cash expended for
clothing.
Of the expenditure, Charlotte Carr, di-
rector, said : "I regard the use of public
funds in this connection to be not only a
humane act to help many thousands of
men, women, and children whose need for
clothing is frankly desperate, but a wise
investment to aid many relief recipients
to become employable. The best we have
been able to do has been to supply shoes
and clothing to children to keep them in
school, to give a clothing voucher or check
to those most likely to find work, and to
see that the sick were cared for."
Truth About Trailers — Agencies in
thirty-one cities answered questionnaires
about the trailer problem for the National
Association for Travelers' Aid and Tran-
sient Service. In only six communities was
any action reported to meet the problem.
Most replies said cautiously, "No prob-
lem, yet." Cities in which trailer registra-
tion is established have found that so far
more problems arise for the health and
police departments than for relief agen-
cies. Only a scattering of destitute trailer
families was reported.
Detroit alone reported that battle lines
had been drawn between trailer colonies
and city authorities, with housing, sani-
tary and fire protection ordinances the
issue. Detroit and Kalamazoo — also
"aware of its problem" — found their situ-
ation complicated further because Michi-
gan is a major producer of trailers.
Trailers are big business and must be re-
spected. One Detroit trailer colony, "holed
in" snugly for the winter, was ordered by
the department of sanitation to vacate, but
authorities were more disposed to confer
than to take drastic measures.
The Atlanta, Ga. Travelers' Aid re-
ports that "destitute transients with an
automobile and trailer, while few in num-
ber, usually give our agencies more trouble
than a dozen other cases. Questions of
gasoline, repairs, food and the impossibil-
ity of establishing legal residence and
efforts to avoid the 'passing on' policy are
the problems presented. . . . Usually
neither automobile nor trailer is worth
enough on a forced cash sale to provide
transportation or sustenance for any pe-
riod . . . and sale is invariably opposed by
Linn in the Albany Times Union
"It's the only way I can get a vacation."
the client." Baltimore reported that, so
far as can be discovered, there is not a
single private parking place for trailers
. . . even trailers with ability to pay are
not wanted . . . there are no municipal
parking places, except one . . . and that is
being allowed to run down to discourage
trailer parking."
Irene Murphy, of the Detroit Council
of Social Agencies puts her finger on the
crux of the trailer's potentialities for
trouble-making when she says, "In general
I think we feel that this problem is in its
initial stages at the present time, and we
hope that each city or community will try
to study it in its broadest sense and not
merely build up local defensive ordinances
which will push the problem into rural
communities or in areas where it will not
be so noticeable, but nevertheless will be
serious. ... If we are going to impose
exacting criteria of health and sanitation
on trailers, we must be prepared to see
that our shabbiest shack dwelling in the
city complies with the same rules."
Publications — A list of theses and
studies on the problems of transiency and
homelessness may be obtained, on request,
from the National Committee on Care of
Transient and Homeless, 1270 Sixth Ave-
nue, New York. ... A bibliography of
personnel studies, tests and related mate-
rials by the personnel standards section
in the Pennsylvania Emergency Relief
Administration has been prepared in a
mimeographed booklet. Some of the studies
are available for distribution. (Informa-
tion from Louise R. Witmer, supervisor,
Personnel Unit, Pennsylvania SERA,
Harrisburg, Pa.)
Child Labor
1TENTUCKY last month became the
twenty-fifth state to ratify the child
labor amendment. Favorable action by
eleven more state legislatures will write
the amendment into the Constitution.
[See Survey Graphic, January 1937, page
10.] The Kentucky legislature met in
special session. When Governor A. B.
Chandler received the letter sent by Presi-
dent Roosevelt to all governors, urging
the elimination of child labor, he amended
the call to include consideration of the
child labor amendment. The House be-
gan by turning it down. But newspapers
which had long opposed ratification came
out with favorable editorials and the
Senate ratified by a nineteen to fourteen
vote. When the measure went to the
lower chamber, the House reversed it-
self, fifty-nine to twenty-four. Amend-
ment foes then secured an injunction
temporarily restraining the governor from
certifying the law, on the ground that
Kentucky had rejected the amendment in
1926, that ratification came too long after
congressional enactment, that the amend-
ment violates the Bill of Rights. But be-
fore this injunction was issued, Governor
Chandler had already sent a certified
copy of the resolution to the secretary of
state, thus closing the issue as far as
Kentucky is concerned.
Other States — The child labor amend-
ment has been introduced in a number
of state legislatures, but at this writing
(January 28) only Kentucky has acted.
. . . The California legislature, which
ratified the amendment in 1925, last
month passed a resolution memorializing
President Roosevelt to continue his
efforts to abolish child labor.
Community Survey — Questionnaires
filled in by children in the public schools
under the supervision of their teachers
in White Plains, Westchester County.
New York, showed that 15 percent of
those between the ages of eight and fif-
teen had been employed. Many of them
had held jobs in violation of state child
labor age provisions. The study was made
by the New York Child Labor Commit-
tee, in cooperation with the Westchester
League of Women Voters. The report,
given out by H. Claude Hardy, superin-
tendent of schools, shows that of 173
street traders, seventy-three were under
twelve years of age, the legal minimum.
Twenty-one percent of those reporting
were in mercantile or factory work, un-
der the jurisdiction of the labor law.
Half of these were under fourteen, the
legal minimum age for such work. Many
of the children reported that they were
continuing with their jobs outside school
hours. The highest wages reported were
by golf caddies earning $10 or more a
week. Lowest earnings were by boys who
sold or delivered magazines, working
about twenty-six hours a week to earn
20 cents. Other wages reported were: a
ten-year-old boy working in a printing
shop for eight weeks, six days a week,
at $1 a week ; a twelve-year-old boy
working in a grocery store all day, seven
days a week, for ten weeks, at $1.50 a
week ; a nine-year-old boy helping on a
50
THE SURVEY
newspaper truck, six days a week, 4 to
8 a. m., 2 to 6 p. m., for 50 cents a week ;
a 10-year-old nursemaid, working all
summer, 8 a. m. to 9:30 p. m., for $1.75
a week. The report recommends more
attention to child labor inspections, a
study of street trades, issuance of em-
ployment certificates by the local certify-
ing office, and thorough check on illegal
employment of children by the school at-
tendance officer.
Public Assistance
COMPARING the first month of its
"* active operation, February 1936, with
its twelfth, January 1937, the Social Se-
curity Board finds that the number of
jurisdictions participating in one or more
of the three federally aided programs of
public assistance — needy aged, needy
blind and dependent children — has in-
creased from twenty-three to forty-three ;
in all three programs from seven to
twenty-four. Last month there were forty-
two approved plans for old age assistance,
twenty-eight for the blind and twenty-
seven for dependent children.
Spokesmen for the board say that it is
still too early to estimate what propor-
tion of those in need are now receiving
aid under the three categories or how
large the load would be if maximum
coverage were reached. Conspicuous in-
creases in numbers covered will depend
upon the development of plans in states
not now participating. Increases in num-
bers of children aided seem to be con-
tingent on liberalizing federal fund-
matching up to the fifty-fifty basis now
applied to the aged and the blind. Fur-
ther extension of aid to the aged and
blind depends on state definitions of eligi-
bility, available state and local funds for
matching federal grants, state policies on
expenditures, and so on. At present it is
fairly evident that the number of persons
receiving asistance in the three categories
reflects more nearly the states' financial
capacity than it does the number of per-
sons in need.
Acute Headache — The Colorado
legislature finds itself in a hot spot as a
result of the constitutional amendment
passed by the electorate last November
requiring it to find funds to pay minimum
monthly pensions of $45 to all citizens
over sixty years of age. [See The Survey,
December 1936, page 373.] Since the fed-
eral law provides matching grants for al-
lowances only up to $30, sets the age limit
at sixty-five years and specifies need, as-
sistance can be counted on from Wash-
ington only for cases that meet those
specifications. "Guesstimators" say that
about 80 percent of all present Colorado
state revenues would be absorbed by the
full operation of this program. What this
would mean to schools, public health and
all state services, is self evident.
The amendment provides for the diver-
sion of revenues now used for various
welfare purposes, but counting them in
and adding possible federal funds still
leaves the legislature obliged to find $10
million in new revenues to initiate the
program. Some legal opinions in the state
hold that the legislature may set up rigid
requirements beyond those specified in the
amendment or may even refuse to act,
"though this is unlikely because of the
powerful old age pension lobby."
An advisory opinion by the state su-
preme court holds that the amendment is
inoperative until implemented by legisla-
tion. Two years must elapse before it can
be resubmitted to the people. Meantime it
is being attacked in the courts and pres-
sure groups are active on both sides.
Check-ups — Now that the initial pres-
sure of getting old age assistance going
is relaxing, the matter of continuing eligi-
bility is an increasing concern of local
administrators. Most state laws require
"reconsideration from time to time." The
Washington State Department of Public
Welfare has ruled that age, citizenship
and residence requirements as well as re-
sources shall be reviewed approximately
a year after the case is opened and that
thereafter budgets and resources shall be
reviewed annually. But, it cautions: "It
is important that both staff members and
recipients understand the spirit and the
intent of this annual statement of eligi-
bility. . . . Obviously we are concerned
with changes and resources only insofar
as they make for changes in eligibility.
Many recipients may not remember small
sums of money which they have earned or
received and judgment should be exer-
cised in pressing for information only in
connection with income and resources that
are significant."
Cook County, 111., not yet wholly out
from under its load of initial applications,
anticipates a continuing service to its aged,
particularly those without close family
ties where "the case worker must take
the place of a son or daughter" in seeing
that the old folks have care and protec-
tion. In all cases changing circumstances
may call for a revision of the budget,
either upward or downward.
Lake County, Ind., has six workers on
its old age assistance staff who do con-
tinuous home visiting trying to "get
around" about once a month. These vis-
its are primarily in the interest of pro-
tecting the client and are in no sense
policing. They have resulted in good rela-
tionships with the old folks and a regular
picture of their total situation.
Poor Lo — States with a large Indian
population are protesting the ruling of
the Social Security Board that Indians
must be included in all programs. Arizona
for example, with an Indian population
of about 50,000, claims that its taxpaying
population of about 450,000 is unable to
carry the state's share of services to so
large a proportion of tax exempt persons.
It seems likely that the congressional dele-
gations from New Mexico, Arizona,
Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota
may form a "common front" to press for
an amendment to the Social Security Act
to provide full federal financing of bene-
fits to Indians.
The Insurances
AMONG the 25 million workers with
whom the Social Security Board has
opened old age benefit accounts there are
35,000 John Smiths — an illustration of
some of the bookkeeping problems encoun-
tered in setting up "the biggest ledger on
earth."
Administration — Eighty-one field of-
fices of the Social Security Board are now
in operation throughout the country.
They are assisting in the maintenance of
wage records of workers for whom social
security accounts have been set up, and
in adjudicating claims for benefits. The
staffs in each office are small and have
been drawn entirely from civil service
lists.
Glenn A. Bowers, executive director
of the division of placement and unem-
ployment insurance of the New York
state department of labor, has advised
employers not to undertake reorganiza-
tion of their accounting systems to make
the reports on individual employes re-
quired under "Instruction No. 6." Mr.
Bowers suggests that the legislature may
amend the requirements of the state un-
employment insurance law as set forth
in this instruction.
Victor Sadd, field representative of the
Social Security Board, holds that the
cost of keeping payroll records for secur-
ity taxes should vary from one tenth of
one percent to one percent of the taxes
paid. Using certain large firms as his
basis, he stated that one of them, employ-
ing 3000 workers, was adding one assist-
ant bookkeeper at a cost of $900 a year
to care for the required records; another
firm will hire an assistant bookkeeper,
half of whose time will be used for social
security records.
Unemployment — In the three weeks
between December 10 and 31, seventeen
state unemployment insurance acts were
approved, bringing the total from nine-
teen to thirty-six, the number of workers
covered from about 12 million to about 18
million. With thirty-five states and the
District of Columbia, the present coverage
is about 80 percent of the total antici-
pated when all the states enact such laws.
Of the thirteen states still without unem-
ployment insurance laws, all but three —
Delaware, Illinois, Missouri — are mainly
agricultural; these three states account
for about 12 percent of the workers not
yet covered.
Since most of the states adopted unem-
FEBRUARY 1937
51
ployment insurance laws late in 1936,
they have not yet completed the collection
of initial contributions. The unemploy-
ment compensation trust fund in the U. S.
Treasury, amounting to approximately
$65 million, represents contributions from
only eight states and the District of Co-
lumbia. By the end of 1937 it is expected
to increase at least tenfold. . . . The
Social Security Board has made grants
amounting to $3,874,285.91 (January 15)
for the administration of unemployment
insurance. A large increase in these grants
is expected during 1937.
Old Age Benefits -A total of 25,904,-
062 workers was shown on the employers'
application forms which had been received
by the wage record office of the Social
Security Board in Baltimore by January
6. A breakdown of the 22 million applica-
tions on file in the temporary typing cen-
ters in late December showed that work-
ers in seven industrial states accounted
for more than half the total applications.
New York stood first with 3,433,631.
Pennsylvania was second. The next five,
in order, were Illinois, Ohio, California,
Massachusetts and Michigan.
Left Out— The problem of the 2,400,-
000 governmental employes who, along
with farm hands, domestics, seasonal
workers and social workers, are not cov-
ered by provisions of the federal-state
social security program, will be studied
by a special committee appointed by the
American Municipal Association, 850
East 58 Street, Chicago.
Types of Legislation— Wisconsin re-
mains the only state with a straight
employer-reserve account for unemploy-
ment insurance. Under this plan, each
employer's contributions are kept in a
segregated account, drawn upon only for
benefits to his own employes. . . . Indiana
and Kentucky combine the employer-
reserve with the pooled fund plan. . . .
Vermont permits the employer to choose
either the employer-reserve or the pooled
fund plan. . . . Thirty-two states have
adopted a straight pooled fund, all con-
tributions going into a single state fund,
from which benefits are paid to eligible
employes of all covered employers.
In twenty of the twenty-three laws
passed since July 1936, contributions are
required of employers only. . . . Nine
states call upon employes for contribut-
tions during 1937. Most of these enacted
their laws early, just before or just after
the passage of the Social Security Act.
A trend toward broadening protection
to workers is indicated by the fact that
many state laws apply to employers of
fewer than eight persons, the number set
by the federal act. During 1937, the
Connecticut law applies to employers of
five or more ; New Hampshire, New
York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah and
Kentucky, of four or more; Arizona and
Ohio, of three or more; Idaho, Minneso-
ta, Pennsylvania, Michigan and the Dis-
trict of Columbia, of one or more.
Twenty-seven states provide for some
kind of merit rating, whereby employers
with stable employment may qualify for
a lower rate of contributions; others have
made provisions for studying such plans.
Company Plans — The Public Service
Corporation of New Jersey and subsidiary
companies will keep their pension plans
intact, the president, Thomas McCarter,
has announced. The group insurance plan
of the corporation has grown from a
benefit payment of $57,840 in 1911 to
$1,262,000 in 1936. ... The Endicott
Johnson Corporation has announced that
it will assume payment of the employes'
tax under the old age benefit title of the
Security Act. The concern has 19,000
workers, whose share of the tax will
amount to about $250,000.
Cooperatives
T^ARM supply cooperatives last year
did more than one eighth of the total
national supply business, according to fig-
ures recently given out by the Farm
Credit Administration. The business of
21,112 farm cooperatives engaged primar-
ily in purchasing amounted to $247 mil-
lion in the last twelve months, while an
additional cooperative purchasing business
of $68 million was reported by 2360 co-
operative marketing associations which
also engage in cooperative purchasing.
The co-ops operate in forty-eight states,
and handle feed, seed, fertilizer, petrol-
eum products, groceries, general merchan-
dise, farm implements, and building ma-
terials. The new figures show a rise of
more than 25 percent in total purchases,
and the formation of 106 new associa-
tions during the year.
Next to Standard Oil — With an in-
crease in volume of more than eight mil-
lion gallons last year, Minnesota coopera-
tives established themselves as the second
largest distributors of gasoline in the
state, according to a writer in National
Petroleum News. Co-op business in gaso-
line doubled during the six depression
years. The percentage of the state's gas
so handled has arisen steadily from 4.88
percent in 1929, to 8.51 in 1935. In the
same period, the business of Standard Oil
of Indiana, the only private company
now leading the co-ops, fell from 26.38
percent to 17.92.
Management Training - - A four
weeks cooperative managers' school, spon-
sored jointly by the University of Minne-
sota and Midland Cooperative Wholesale
opened on the university campus recently.
Its student body is made up of about
seventy managers and prospective man-
agers of gas aiid oil co-ops. Instructors
are drawn from the university faculty,
and from the technical and educational
staffs of the Midland. The course covers
technical problems of oil distribution, as
well as general economics and the history
and philosophy of the cooperative move-
ment.
Go-op Jamboree — The executive com-
mittee of the International Cooperative
Alliance, meeting in Warsaw in December,
made preliminary arrangements for the
fifteenth triennial congress of the alliance,
to be held in Paris in September 1937.
It is expected that the congress will bring
together representatives of one hundred
million members of cooperative associa-
tions in thirty-nine countries. The execu-
tive committee also announced that the
sixteenth international cooperative school
will be held in Nancy, France, the first
two weeks of July.
Record and Report — A survey of con-
sumer cooperatives, their actual status in
our national economy, is included in the
December issue of The Index, published
by the New York Trust Co., 100 Broad-
way, New York. ... A pamphlet describ-
ing Agricultural Cooperatives in Finland
is available through the Cooperative
League, 167 West 12 Street, New York.
... A Study of Contemporary Unem-
ployment and of Basic Data for Planning
a Self-help Cooperative in Palo Alto, a
WPA project directed by Ada F. Wyman,
considers the possibilities of permanent
functioning of such groups, as well as
the emergency aspects of self-help coop-
eratives.
Consumers' Cooperatives is the subject
of the latest volume of the Reference
Shelf, published to supply "a basis for
public discussion." In addition to briefs
and bibliography, the handbook has about
200 pages of informative articles, pro and
con. (H. W. Wilson Co. 297 pp. Price
90 cents, postpaid of The Survey.)
Nurses and Nursing
/"\F major importance to the whole field
^"^ of nursing is the forthcoming third
edition of the Curriculum for Nursing
Schools. A project of the League for
Nursing Education, with other national
nursing organizations cooperating, the
new edition has been worked over by
specialists in social work, education, diet-
etics, hospital administration and library
service — to name only a few. Approxi-
mately 700 reports and their recommen-
dations have been cleared through the
central committee. The new curriculum,
like its earlier editions in 1917 and 1927,
will be influential in setting standards
for nursing education and will be used in
appraising nursing education programs.
The American Nurses' Association, in
a special bulletin, explains that the pres-
52
ent revision was necessary "because the
Grading Committee's findings revealed
that the majority of nursing schools in
the country are mediocre schools and that
there is no need for more graduate nurses
with mediocre training and background.
It revealed also that there is great need
for nurses with broader experience, better
basic professional background, and addi-
tional specialized training." Among other
factors, it is pointed out that "nursing
schools have been experimenting along
some new lines in the last ten years and
have learned a number of ways of im-
proving their programs and their meth-
ods of teaching nurses."
Emphasizing that the new curriculum
sets a standard, but carries no mandate,
the bulletin adds, "No set of rules can
govern the administration of the proposed
curriculum. Each school which wishes to
revise its educational program must do
so according to its own situation and po-
tentialities. . . . The curriculum is a tool.
Its effectiveness will depend upon how
thoughtfully and carefully it is used. . . .
The league fully recognizes the fact that
all schools do not operate on the same
level. All cannot carry out the recom-
mendations, even in adapted form, with
equal ease and speed. All can consider
their own educational programs in rela-
tion to them."
New Status — Nursing education at the
Presbyterian Hospital and Medical Cen-
ter in New York City, heretofore admin-
istered by the school of nursing of the
hospital in cooperation with the Columbia
University faculty of medicine, has been
reorganized. Henceforth, student nurses
at the Medical Center hospitals will be
registered as students in a newly estab-
lished department of nursing of Columbia
University, with full university rank.
The degree of Bachelor of Science will be
conferred for the first time on nursing
graduates of the class of 1939. The pro-
fessional diploma in nursing will continue
to be awarded by the Presbyterian Hos-
pital School of Nursing. "All the re-
sponsibility for instruction and education-
al administration in the field of nursing
will be transferred to the faculty of medi-
cine," according to official announcement.
Prof. Margaret E. Conrad will be ex-
ecutive officer of the new university de-
partment, which will be administered in
cooperation with the Presbyterian, Sloane
and Babies Hospitals of the Center.
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
If You Have "ACID INDIGESTION"
Alkalize Your Stomach This Way in Few Minutes
VOU can relieve even the
*• most annoying symptoms of
acid stomach in almost as little
time, now, as it takes to tell.
The answer is quick and sim-
ple: You alkalize your stomach
almost instantly this way:
Take — two teaspoonfuls of Phil-
lips' Milk of Magnesia 30 min-
utes after meals. Or, take two
Phillips' Milk of Magnesia Tab-
lets, each of which contains the
equivalent of a teaspoonful of
the liquid form.
Try this method. Get a bottle
of the liquid Phillips' for home
use. A box of the Phillips' tab-
lets that you can carry with
you in pocket or purse —
only 25(f for a big box.
Watch out that any you
accept is clearly labeled
"Phillips' Milk of Magnesia.''
PHILLIPS
MILK OF MAGHESiA
MERCUROCHROME, H.W. & D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodium)
After a thorough Investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
(1935)
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Request
HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md
Beware — Graduate nurses were warned
recently by the United Air Lines to be-
ware of a purported "home course of
study" to "prepare" them for jobs as air
stewardesses. Nurses are being solicited
and victims have paid substantial enroll-
ment fees in this purported training center
for airplane cabin attendants, of which
a United Air Line official said, "Even if
the school exists we would give no recog-
nition to any such preparatory training as
we maintain our own training school. . . ."
In Print — A new and timely publication
from the New York State Department
of Health is Nursing Care of Pneumonia,
a practical guide to the nursing and
medical aspects of the disease. (Available
to physicians and nurses, on request with-
in the state; limited supply for out-of-
state requests. From the department,
Albany, N. Y.) . . . New York City's
Bureau of Nursing, of the city health
department, has undertaken publication
of a new organ, Our Nurses, to appear
five times yearly, carrying news of ac-
tivities to its large staff, which has grown
from seventeen nurses in 1902 to approxi-
mately 800 today.
The Public's Health
>-y-<HE health inventory on which the
1 U. S. Public Health Service has been
working since October 1935 — the most
comprehensive health survey ever made
in this country — is well along toward
completion. A study of chronic and dis-
abling illness has been made by house-to-
house canvass in ninety cities. Investiga-
tions of communicable disease, occupation-
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
53
al morbidity and mortality, hearing con-
ditions, facilities for health protection and
medical care, all are included in the find-
ings of the inventory. Enumeration was
completed at the end of last June; by
October, the coding and card punching
processes were about half complete.
In the chronic illness study alone, 867,-
000 family schedules representing some
three million persons, were collected.
This coverage is from a third to a hun-
dred times larger than in previous studies
of comparable method and information.
The work started with a few hundred
health survey coders, working in Detroit.
Directed by Clark Tibbitts, chairman of
the operating council, the staff was built
up with WPA workers, until at the peak,
a force of 1300 persons was at work.
Programs of analysis for the studies
are being followed out, progress reports
have been issued, and a few indicatory
findings have been released to interested
professional groups.
Detroit Fights TB —A bold and deter-
mined drive against tuberculosis is going
forward in Detroit, sponsored by the
Wayne County Medical Society, the De-
troit Department of Health and the De-
troit News. Following the "medical par-
ticipation plan," already familiar to De-
troit in its battle against diphtheria, physi-
cians, radio station WWJ, the Detroit
Tuberculosis Sanatorium Association and
the public all are active in the campaign.
Paul de Kruif cooperated with A. M.
Smith of the News in producing a series
of twelve featured newspaper articles to
publicize the campaign. The radio station
has been broadcasting a weekly drama,
Death Fighters.
Through all these publicity media, the
citizens of Detroit have been told that
Detroit is engaged in a battle to eradicate
tuberculosis, and that it can be won event-
ually, if the public will give full coopera-
tion. Activities center at present on case
finding, treating the early or minimal
case, hospitalizing and isolating the in-
fectious case.
Confer on Syphilis — Starting the
year's war against syphilis, Surgeon Gen-
eral Thomas Parran rallied five hundred
interested physicians, health officers, so-
cial workers and representatives of pro-
fessional organizations for a conference
in Washington.
In an estimate of the size of the
problem, evidence was presented that the
HEALTH IN PRINT
INSTRUCTION IN HYGIENE IN INSTI-
TUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION,
by James Frederick Rogers, M.D. Bulletin
(1936) No. 7. U.S. Department of the In-
terior. Office of Education.
History, development and present
state of the teaching of hygiene in this
group of educational institutions. (Price
10 cents from the superintendent of
documents, Washington, D. C.)
HISTORY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH,
by Eleanor J. MacDonald.
From its earliest beginnings, the
story of the growth of this venerable
department of health is told in its his-
toric setting, throwing light on the
early public health movement in other
parts of America. (In Commonhealth,
Volume 23, number 2, quarterly of the
Massachusetts Department of Public
Health. Free within the state. Editor,
M. Luise Diez, Division of Child Hy-
giene, State House, Boston.) A sym-
posium on dental health-education,
service, problems and programs, is con-
tained in Volume 23, number 3, same
publication.
THE LEGAL BASIS OF PUBLIC MEDI-
CAL CARE IN TWELVE STATES. Pub-
lication of the American Public Welfare
Association, assisted by the Rosenwald Fund.
Reports laws relating to medical aid,
hospitalization, and public health, from
statutes and interpretations of the
higher courts, for the states studied.
(Price 50 cents from the association,
850 East 58 Street, Chicago, 111.)
present annual incidence of new cases is
probably not less than 681,000. Prevalence
in the general population was estimated
at from 5 to 10 percent, including all
stages of the disease, with the proviso
that all statistics on syphilis and other
venereal diseases are now inadequate, and
are badly in need of improvement.
The section on public health control of
syphilis stressed the need for making
treatment facilities available to persons
of all economic levels, though public
health officials emphasized that there was
no desire to treat all cases at public ex-
pense. While treatment by family physi-
cians was favored, the section reported
that, in its judgment, the treatment of in-
digent and economic borderline patients
in clinics would be necessary, using so-
cial service to determine degree of ability
to pay.
Means of increasing adequacy of re-
porting, the question of cooperation of
private physicians, cooperation between
health departments and medical societies,
treatment and medical follow-up of pa-
tients and uniformity of instruction in
syphilology in medical schools were sub-
jects emphasized.
Health of Jobless— A thousand ap-
plicants for work relief in San Francisco,
in the natural intake of two typical
weeks, were studied by the Central Medi-
cal Bureau, to gain a picture of their
physical condition and medical problems.
They were given complete physical exami-
nations and medical histories were taken.
They were classified roughly as : A, physi-
cally robust and organically sound ; B,
physically frail but organically sound; C,
having a demonstrable organic lesion not
producing symptoms ; and D, having a
demonstrable organic lesion which would
interfere with normal activities. By this
grouping 26.7 percent fell into class A;
30.2 percent into class B ; 36.5 into class
C; and 6.5 into class D. The sampling
statistics showed a remarkable consistency
between groups, and suggested to the re-
searchers the importance of the C group
in the persistence of the relief load. The
report is available in reprint form from
California and Western Medicine, 450
Sutter Street, San Francisco, issue of
October 1936.
jobs and Workers
DASED on unpublished data of the 1930
Census, the U. S. Women's Bureau
offers a new study of the "employed
woman homemaker." It shows that 36
percent of the gainfully employed women
in this country are homemakers, more
than one fourth of them as heads of
families. About two thirds of the em-
ployed homemakers were working in in-
dustry, in offices, as saleswomen in stores,
and as servants and waitresses. In general
the types of employment offer little oppor-
tunity for a career, and in many cases
very low pay. About one third of these
women were making homes for four or
more persons, 132,000 for eight or more.
One sixth of these women workers, in
addition to wage earning and homemak-
ing found it necessary to supplement their
wages by taking lodgers. (Bulletin of the
Women's Bureau. No. 148. Price 10 cents
from the superintendent of documents,
Washington.)
Minimum Wage — A minimum wage
bill, designed to meet the objections to the
1933 Act which the U. S. Supreme Court
held unconstitutional, has been introduced
in the New York legislature. [See Survey
Graphic, July 1936, page 412.] The new
bill differs from the earlier one chiefly
in basing minimum wages on "the value
of the services or class of services ren-
dered," rather than on cost of living. In
presenting the measure, Representative
Irwin Steingut stated: "Available record?
indicate that 15 percent of the women
employed in industry in this state earn
less than 25 cents an hour, and bl/2 per-
cent less than 20 cents. These shocking
facts demand an immediate remedy."
That the U. S. Supreme Court de-
cision in the Tipaldo case did not halt
all minimum wage development is shown
by a January News Letter of the U. S.
Women's Bureau, giving the bureau's an-
nual review of "the situation of employed
women." Twelve states having minimum
wage laws have been at work with or-
ganization and study "directed toward
making known the status of women's
wages and raising standards of their pay-
ment." It has been possible to continue
the enforcement of minimum wage pro-
visions for minors in some states. Other
states, including Connecticut, New Hamp-
shire and Massachusetts have continued
all minimum wage activities, in some in-
stances revising the law to meet changing
needs. California, in its garment industry,
and New York, in sections of its laundry
industry, have secured the voluntary co-
operation of employers' groups in main-
taining minimum wage standards.
Peace on the Railroads — Except for
one small industrial railroad with forty
employes, the Railway Mediation Board
is able to report, for the second time, a
year in which "there was no strike and
no interruption of railroad service on ac-
count of labor disputes." During the
year there were 200 disputes sufficiently
serious to require intervention by the
board, and 1500 which were referred to
the National Railroad Adjustment Board,
the agency having jurisdiction over ques-
tions involving interpretation or applica-
tion of agreements between carriers and
employes. On eleven roads, strike votes
were taken after the first mediation
efforts failed, yet in these cases further
negotiations forestalled strike action. The
54
THE SURVEY
report adds: "That peaceful relationships
have been maintained throughout the in-
dustry under these circumstances is a
tribute no less to the efficiency, fair deal-
ing and industrial statesmanship of the
railroads and of the representatives of
the employes and their organizations than
it is to the Railway Labor Act itself."
Guild Decision — The National La-
bor Relations Board, handing down its
decision in the case of two employes dis-
charged by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
finds that the two men were discharged
because they took part in founding and
organizing the Seattle chapter of the
American Newspaper Guild. The board
ordered them reinstated with adjusted
back pay, and directed the paper to end
all interference with its employes "in the
exercise of their rights to join labor or-
ganizations." The decision reviews the
evidence taken before Edwin S. Smith,
trial examiner, during the sensational
strike which resulted in suspension of
publication by the Post-Intelligencer,
founded in 1865 and acquired by Hearst
in 1921.
Proposed Legislation — Drafts of a
number of proposals for measures de-
signed to give effect to recommendations
of the management-labor Council for In-
dustrial Progress have been submitted to
President Roosevelt by George L. Berry,
coordinator for industrial cooperation.
Proposed bills on hours, wages, child
labor and competitive practices are prem-
ised on the fact, to be established by legis-
lative findings, that sweated labor and
child labor in industry constitute unfair
methods of competition. No bill was
submitted from the council on the subject
of an employment census, although com-
mittee recommendations were unanimous
that a complete national census of em-
ployment status every five years should
be authorized, supplemented by periodic
checks. [See The Survey, January 1937,
page 15.]
Child Welfare
CONDITIONS affecting American
childhood in 1936 are reviewed in
the annual report of Katharine Lenroot,
chief of the U. S. Children's Bureau.
Stress is laid on developing activities of
states in maternal, child health, child
welfare and crippled children's services,
through the three parts of the Social
Security Act administered by the bureau.
What is called a "rough measure of
conditions," derived from the statistics
currently available through the Bureau
of Census and the Children's Bureau, in-
dicates: an encouraging decline in infant
mortality, shown in preliminary figures
for 1935 as against 1934; a slight decline
in the United States' all-nations "high"
in maternal mortality; a definite tendency
ECONOMIC
STATUS
and
MEDICAL
CARE
PlR
60-
70-
60-
50-
PER CENT OF ILLNESSES RECEIVING
MEDICAL CARET
III
:RATE POOR POOR
OMIC ECONOMIC 19)2
ST.TUJ STATU, »~3D
!»»»
Illlll] FRIC O.PAQT PAV
1 PRIVATE PMVSICIA
POOR
I9J2
PER CENT OF ATTENDED ILLNESSES
RECEIVING SPECIFIC CARE
IOOCRATC DOOR POOR POOR
ECONOMY ECONOMIC 1932 1952
STATUS STATUS AND Moot»«n
OR OFFIC
Cu»
HoiPrrAL-
PRrVATE
HOSPITAL-
Measuring Health Needs in an Urban District, by Dorothy G. Wiehl. Milbank Memorial
Fund Quarterly, October 1936. This chart indicates the amounts and kinds of medical
care received by families of various economic levels, as shown by a survey in the Mott
Haven District, New York City. Percentages are compiled from reported illnesses.
for a return to child labor following the
scrapping of NRA codes ; a 3 percent de-
crease in juvenile delinquency; a steadily
decreasing proportion of dependent chil-
dren in institutions, and an increasing
proportion receiving care in foster homes.
For Handicapped — Thanks to a
WPA grant and loan, donations of local
clubs and mercantile firms and a bequest
from the estate of Henrietta West Rob-
erts, Indianapolis now boasts a modern
and elaborately equipped school especially
for its handicapped children, where along
with their school work, they are given
expert medical care.
Children at the Roberts School for
Handicapped Children are brought to the
school by taxi service supplied by the
Indianapolis Foundation. All eight grades
of school work are provided for them,
and besides their regular teachers, an ex-
pert physio-therapist, occupational thera-
pist, graduate nurse and several visiting
doctors. The school is equipped with sun
rooms, rest and lunch rooms, rooms for
muscle treatment, walking practice, and
rhythm rooms. The entire school is two
stories high, modern in architecture and
decoration. At present about 180 students
are enrolled.
Guidance Clinic — Recently completed
in Los Angeles, Calif, is a five year dem-
onstration of clinic guidance service in
connection with a group work program.
With funds from an anonymous donor,
the Child Welfare Clinic was organized
as a unit of All Nations Foundation, a
group work agency in a section of the city
with a high delinquency rate. Children
were referred by the foundation, were
studied by the clinic and treated by the
carefully integrated services of both, in
cooperation with other social agencies. An
interesting phase of the demonstration
was the use made of the data accumulated
by the clinic studies in evaluating, plan-
ning, and administering the group work
program.
As an outgrowth of the demonstration,
the University of Southern California for
several semesters has offered a course on
the individual approach in group work
which enrolls both group and case work-
ers. Says Everett W. DuVall, Ph.D., of
the university faculty, who directed the
clinic and organized the course : "a con-
siderable number of the local group work
agencies have modified their programs to
include the individual approach. This
has resulted in a better working relation-
ship with case work agencies active with
the same families. The desirability of in-
tegrating the techniques in which the two
fields differ has been demonstrated on an
organic basis and some beginning has been
made in the integration of case work and
group work on a community basis."
In Print — Children in Foster Care in
New York State, 1911-35, a study by
James H. Foster and Robert Axel, traces
changes and extent of the use of institu-
tions and of foster . homes for children.
It is published by the New York State
Department of Welfare. (Publication No.
20, from the department, Albany.) ... A
bibliography on foster family care has
been published by the Russell Sage Foun-
dation library. (Price 10 cents from the
library, 130 East 22 Street, New York.)
... A listing of an extensive series of
pamphlets published by the Iowa Child
Welfare Research Station is available
from the station, University of Iowa,
Iowa City.
The article, Dependent Children Under
Care of Children's Agencies, by Agnes K.
Hanna, has been reprinted from The So-
cial Service Review of June 1936, and is
available from the U. S. Children's Bu-
FEBRUARY 1937
55
reau, Washington. It reviews the findings
ot the federal census of children under
institutional care and in foster homes on
December 31, 1933.
Professional
VV7"ITH legislatures in full bloom, and
social workers much concerned with
the fruits thereof, increasing numbers of
state conferences of social work have
pledged themselves to programs of social
action through support of legislative pro-
grams. Latest is the Minnesota confer-
ence. Under its new articles of incorpora-
tion and by-laws, plans have been laid
for a committee to disseminate informa-
tion on social legislation. The conference
will vote to support or oppose specific
measures and may employ, at the dis-
cretion of the board of directors, a per-
son or persons for "legislative work" in
the nature of lobbying.
Strategy — Social workers lobbying for
relief legislation have been like bulls in a
china shop, Savilla Simon told the Chi-
cago chapter of the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers in the course of a
discussion of legislative strategy. As
means by which social workers could ex-
ert more effective influence she suggested:
"Broadening our base of action through
mobilizing and stimulating action by lay
people; by providing facts and educating
the public as to the need, and getting our
lay friends to do the actual lobbying.
"Working through and strengthening
the State Conference on Social Welfare,
because it is state-wide and includes lay
people.
"Educating public opinion throughout
the state in behalf of our measures, so
that it becomes good policy to vote for
them in the legislature.
"Supplementing the work in the home
districts with skillful representation at
the state capitol.
"Developing more sophistication in our
approach to public officials and legislators
and above all, standing together as social
workers and building up through every
legislative effort a permanent friendly
contact for our profession and the social
welfare movement."
For Students — Research training fel-
lowships, and grants-in-aid of research in
the social sciences, have been announced
for 1937-8 by the Social Science Research
Council. Subjects include: economics; so-
cial, economic, and political history; politi-
cal science; social psychology; sociology;
cultural anthropology; statistics, and so-
cial aspects of related disciplines. The fel-
lowships are open to citizens of the
United States or Canada, who on July 1,
1937 are under twenty-five years of age,
and hold an A.B. degree. Graduate stu-
dents are ineligible. Applications must be
filed by March 15. (Further information
from John E. Pomfret, 230 Park Avenue,
N'ew York.)
For a full list of social work fellow-
ships and scholarships for the academic
year 1937-38, see the January issue of
The Compass, organ of the American
Association of Social Workers, 130 East
22 Street, New York.
Citizen Service
CEEKING the reason why the United
Charities of St. Louis has not reached
its financial quota in any year thus far,
the research department of the Commun-
ity Councils has analyzed community giv-
ers and giving in 1935 and 1936. The giv-
ing of 1314 board members, some serv-
ing more than one agency, was studied
along with that of five other groups.
Average group contributions in St. Louis
It was found that only 20 percent of
the board members of agencies included
in the United Charities campaign took
part in the annual fund-raising. How-
ever, their contributions amounted to 12.1
percent of the total raised and their
average was $287.25 as compared with
a general campaign average of $13. The
median board member gift was $75.
Nearly 70 percent of the total group of
board members gave to the 1936 cam-
paign. This is a smaller total of board
member givers than in 1935, though
their gifts tended to be larger.
Junior League — Winnipeg, Canada
has a new family bureau, established last
fall as the result of a local survey of
need in the relief and family welfare
fields, which was initiated and partly
underwritten by the Junior League of
Winnipeg. The family agency, an asset
new to Winnipeg, is headed by a paid
case worker, Elin Anderson, assisted by
ten volunteers from the Junior League,
one a graduate of the Toronto School of
Social Work. The survey was made un-
der the d'rection of Charlotte Whitton
of Ottawa, assisted by Mrs. Cameron
Parker and a representative committee
from the community.
For six months the Junior League of
Los Angeles has employed a professional
social worker, Mildred Buttorff Pratt,
to place volunteers in their jobs. League
workers are now assisting in twenty-two
agencies in the community. Mrs. Pratt
formerly was placement secretary for the
Cleveland League. ... In Austin, Tex.
the league is sharing in an experimental
project in child welfare in the Settlement
Club — a children's home — by providing a
trained case worker's salary as well as
volunteer case work by league members.
The project aims toward "a well rounded
children's service which will include
supervised foster homes." It grew out of
a survey of the local situation made hy
Marjorie Embree for the Child Welfare
League of America.
Believing that good theatrical enter-
tainment for children of grade school age
is no less a community service than
other social welfare activities, the Junior
League of Milwaukee — in line with other
leagues throughout the country — is devel-
oping a program of productions for the
city's school children. The Milwaukee
Social Center and the board of education
are cooperating closely with the players
group of the league.
Interpretation
'TpHE New York chapter of the
•*• AASW has called for volunteers
among its members to write to the papers
when subjects come up for public discus-
sion on which professional social work
opinion should be put forward. Feeling
that a flow of vigorous communications
often can influence a given newspaper
"campaign," the association hopes to or-
ganize and amplify this technique into a
practical tool for molding public opinion.
According to the plan, a committee will
assume responsibility for clipping and as-
signing articles which seem to call for
social worker comment. The letters are
to represent individual, not association
opinion.
To the Public— With Douglas P. Fal-
coner, executive director of the Brooklyn
Bureau of Charities, as chairman of the
program committee, the Brooklyn Coun-
cil for Social Planning is conducting a
comprehensive survey of that unwieldy
and growing borough's social service
facilities and its needs. A series of public
meetings will be held, each concerning a
special field of social need. Ninety social
service and civic agencies are affiliated in
the Brooklyn Council for Social Planning
which, in turn, is a part of the Welfare
Council of New York City. . . . The re-
cent annual report of the Brooklyn Bu-
reau of Charities, New Paths to Service,
directs the attention of its readers to
future planning with an attractive, well
illustrated booklet. ... In presenting its
fall appeal for funds, the New York
AICP announced that 92 percent of the
56
THE SURVEY
budget for next year will be spent "for
the prevention and elimination of destitu-
tion and for direct relief to persons who
do not come within the scope of the pres-
ent government relief activities." The cost
of an impressive booklet for the society's
campaign, was provided "by one of
AICP's friends who believes that the so-
ciety's work requires interpretation no
less graphic . . . than any other enterprise
of such scope."
Underpinning — The recently born
publication of the U. S. Public Health
Service, The Health Officer, is focusing
much of its attention on means of devel-
oping community acceptance of public
health programs. In the issue of Novem-
ber 1936, Dr. C. C. Siemens, commis-
sioner of the Michigan State Department
of Health, discussing Publicizing Public
Health, warns: "Development of public
health services, it is generally recognized,
depends to a large extent upon the degree
of public understanding and acceptance
of the purposes and values of such serv-
ices. . . . We are witnessing a tremendous
boom in the development of public health
services [with the Social Security Act].
... A firm foundation in public opinion
must be built for the available superstruc-
ture of public health organization. . . .
Without that, this current, top-heavy
development of the public health pro-
gram, ten years in advance of its day, may
topple for lack of firm foundation in the
public consciousness."
In Print — The Councillor, quarterly
publication of the Baltimore Council of
Social Agencies is only in its infancy, but
already it has taken form as a demonstra-
tion of how to keep a good local publica-
tion local, of serving its particular pur-
pose, and achieving readability. . . . The
still pyramiding returns from the publica-
tion in Survey Graphic, July 1936, of Dr.
Thomas Parran's taboo-breaking article,
Syphilis, The Next Great Plague to Go,
hold significance for "interpreters." De-
spite misgivings current in press and radio,
Survey Graphic and The Readers Digest
(where the article was printed in
abridged form) between them have stimu-
lated news stories reaching a circulation
of four to five million readers, have circu-
lated approximately three hundred thou-
sand reprints and charts, and have re-
ceived letters indicating a favorable, even
eager reception. Once the conspiracy of
silence was cracked, the public gave quick
evidence of its ability to "take" this form
of education.
Facing the Future with the Character
Building Agencies, a round-up of factual
and appeal material for youth organiza-
tions, prepared by the Community Chests
and Councils, Inc., constitutes a useful
handbook. (Price 25 cents, less in quan-
tity; from the organization, 155 East 44
Street, New York.)
A bouquet of the opinions of newspaper
men on social workers and their notions
of news contains more spinach than roses
but offers many practical pointers to space
hungry publicitors. The material was col-
lected by a newspaper man, Earl Minder-
man, for an address before the Ohio
Welfare Conference. Entitled What
Some Newspaper Men Think of Social
Workers, it is offered as a special bulletin
by the Social Work Publicity Council, 130
East 22 Street, New York. (Price 25
cents.) ...A bibliography on social work
interpretation, compiled by Mary Swain
Routzahn, is offered by the Russell Sage
Foundation Library, 130 East 22 Street,
New York, as Bulletin No. 140 of its
series of bibliographies. (Price 10 cents.)
People and Things
CURPRISE of the month to all but a
few insiders was the announcement of
the resignation of Sanford Bates as di-
rector of the U. S. Bureau of Prisons and
his appointment as executive director of
the Boys' Clubs of
America, Inc. Mr.
Bates has had eigh-
teen distinguished
years in the correc-
tional field but many
people have sus-
pected that his heart
was not in the bus-
iness of locking the
barn door after the
horse was stolen.
His philosophic concern was more with
what happens to men before and after
prison than in prisons — even better pris-
ons. He has been a steadfast advocate of
a sound parole system even when that
advocacy brought him into disagreement
with heads of other bureaus in the De-
partment of Justice.
In his new post with the Boys' Clubs of
America, Inc., Mr. Bates will work close-
ly with ex-President Herbert Hoover, re-
cently elected chairman of the board, on
an enlarged program for youth in
neglected and high delinquency areas. In
his letter of resignation to Attorney Gen-
eral Cummings, Mr. Bates said: "This
seems to offer a splendid opportunity in
the field of crime prevention. Incidentally
a salary 50 percent in excess of what I
am receiving has been guaranteed."
Succeeding Mr. Bates as director of
the U. S. Bureau of Prisons is his former
assistant, James V. Bennett.
Presidents — Henry G. Barbey, engi-
neer, known for his many years of "board
member service" in health and wel-
fare work, has been elected president of
the Society of the New York Hospital,
succeeding the late Wilson M. Powell.
Barklie McKee Henry, president of the
New York Association for Improving the
Condition of the Poor, was elected vice-
president. Mr. Barbey is the twenty-sixth
president of the hospital, the first having
been John Watts, who headed the group
to which George III of England granted
a charter to establish and maintain the
first general hospital in New York City
and the second in colonial America.
Lawson Purdy, acting president of the
Russell Sage Foundation since the death
of Robert W. de Forest, has now been
elected president.
The learned societies which met in
Chicago, the last week of December,
elected as presidents: O. M. W. Sprague,
Harvard University, the American Eco-
nomic Association; W. Randolph Bur-
gess, New York, the American Statistical
Association; Ellsworth Paris, University
of Chicago, the American Sociological So-
ciety; Henry A. Sanders, University of
Michigan, the American Philological
Association; and William B. Dinsmoor,
Columbia University, the Archeological
Institute of America.
Honors— Dr. Hugh S. Gumming, for-
mer surgeon general of the U. S. Public
Health Service, was awarded the Marcel-
lus Hartley Medal of the National
Academy of Sciences in appreciation of
his "eminent services to the public, per-
formed without a view to monetary gains
and by methods which in the opinion of
the academy are truly scientific."
Citations "for the protection of human
rights" were presented by New York
Lodge No. 1, B'nai B'rith, to Charles H.
Tuttle, Oswald Garrison Villard, Jere-
miah T. Mahoney, Dorothy Thompson,
Newton D. Baker and James G. Mac-
Donald, all more or less of New York,
and the U.S.A. ... The Brooklyn (N. Y.)
Lodge of B'nai B'rith presented an award
to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, as the New
York City newspaper that had done most
last year to promote inter-racial amity,
as well as good will among the people of
the United States. . . . The out-patient
department of Palestine's first medical
center, now under construction in Jerusa-
lem, will be named for Supreme Court
Justice Louis D. Brandeis.
Celebrating Homer Folks' seventieth
birthday, February 18, a group of his
friends and associates in New York will
give a dinner in recognition of his dis-
tinguished contributions to health and
welfare. Executive of the State Chari-
ties Aid Association of New York dur-
ing most of this century, Mr. Folks' wide
range of activities and his push for action
along the whole social front caused Paul
Kellogg to characterize him as '"a human
invention as significant as the dynamo."
On Campus — Levering Tyson of New
York, distinguished in the field of adult
education, and organizer and director of
the National Advisory Council on Radio
in Education, is the new president of
Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pa.
The New Jersey College for Women
has added Prof. W. O. Brown to its fac-
ulty for courses in labor problems, social
FEBRUARY 1937
57
legislation, social change and social con-
trol and population problems. Professor
Brown was formerly at the University
of Cincinnati, and more recently with the
WPA research division in Washington.
New Jobs —Frank W. Hagerty, for
four years probation officer of the U. S.
Court of the Southern District of New
York, has joined the staff of the National
Probation Association as a field agent.
Mr. Hagerty's services for field surveys,
probation institutes and educational activ-
ities will be available to communities
which request them.
Following through a new program of
child placement, the Jewish 'Children's
Home of Kansas City, Mo. has added to
its staff Doris Rosenstock, from the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin.
Helen Eastman, who was general sec-
retary of the Social Welfare Society of
Lincoln, Neb., is a new staff member of
the Association of Junior Leagues of
America.
Ida F. Butler, long assistant director
of nursing service of the American Red
Cross, has been appointed national di-
rector, to succeed the late Clara D.
Noyes. Miss Butler was active in Red
Cross work before the World War and
at that time served the organization in
France in the Lyons hospitals for refugee
children. . . . Rena Haig, who was di-
rector of public health nursing of the
Pacific branch, American Red Cross nurs-
ing service, has been appointed chief super-
vising public health nurse of the Califor-
nia State Department of Health. . . .
Elizabeth Martin, formerly executive
secretary of the Missouri State Nurses'
Association, is now superintendent of
Children's Mercy Hospital of Kansas
City, Mo.
The chief officer of the New York state
division of parole is now David Dressier,
who headed the list in the civil service
promotion examination. He succeeds Philip
Bramer, resigned. Phillip T. Collins is the
new case supervisor in charge of the de-
partment's social work program.
Books — Best sellers from the Russell
Sage Foundation publications department
during the year just past were: Cash Re-
lief, Joanna Colcord ; Social Diagnosis,
Mary Richmond; Social Work as a Pro-
fession, Josephine Brown; Social Work
Year Book; What Is Social Case Work,
Mary Richmond — in the order mentioned.
A half dozen others, of more specialized
appeal were within shooting distance of
the leaders.
Meetings — The American Public Health
Association announces — in very good sea-
son— that its sixty-sixth annual meeting
will be October 5-8. . . . The Interna-
tional Hospital Association will hold its
1937 sessions in Paris, July 6-11.
The American Home Economics Asso-
ciation will meet in Kansas City, Mo.,
June 21-25. Information from Katharine
McFarland Ansley, 620 Mills Building,
Washington, D. C. . . . The National
League for Nursing Education and the
New England Division of the American
Nurses' Association will meet in Boston,
May 10-14. . . . The International Coun-
cil of Nurses will meet in London,
July 19-24.
News Notes — A new organization, the
American Public Works Association, has
been formed consolidating the member-
ship of the American Society of Munici-
pal Engineers and the International
Association of Public Works Officials.
Address, 850 East 58 Street, Chicago.
A new chapter house, a memorial to the
late Christine L. Reeve, has been given to
the Pasadena chapter of the American
Red Cross by her husband, General
Charles McC. Reeve, for many years
chapter chairman.
The first Young Women's Christian
Association in this country, that of Bos-
ton, is celebrating its seventieth birthday.
After twenty years "at the old stand,"
New York's venerable Grand Street Set-
tlement has moved from the street which
gave it its name to the building formerly
used by Clark House at 283 Rivington
Street.
Turnover — MacEnnis Moore will
henceforth devote his full time to the
finance and publicity program of the Na-
tional Association for Travelers Aid and
Transient Service. The other job which
he has been driving tandem with
NATATS — executive secretary of the
Committee on Care of Transient and
Homeless — goes to Philip E. Ryan, Jr.,
recently with the transient division of the
New York Temporary Emergency Relief
Administration.
Edna S. Lewis, for two years with the
New York Adult Education Council, has
succeeded Caroline Simon, resigned, as
executive director of the New York sec-
tion, National Council of Jewish Women.
Agnes T. Miller, formerly with the
New Jersey ERA, is now case supervisor
of the New Jersey Children's Home So-
ciety, succeeding Elizabeth E. Muller who
has resigned to join the staff of the Balti-
more Children's Aid Society. . . . Robert
K. Bantz has left the Buffalo, N. Y.,
YMCA to become program director of
the "Y" in Bridgeport, Conn. . . . Kath-
arine Wakefield, new chief admitting offi-
cer of the Boston Dispensary, was a case
worker at that institution before going
to Chicago where she performed similar
work at the Michael Reese Hospital. . . .
Victoria Larmour, formerly a case super-
visor of the New York state division of
parole has received the habit of the For-
eign Mission Sisters of St. Dominic at
Maryknoll, N. Y. and will be known as
Sister Victoria Francis.
Lucy Garner, executive of the national
services division of the national board of
the YWCA, has departed for the Chicago
Council of Social Agencies, where she
now heads the division of education anil
recreation. At a farewell dinner in New
York, a "warning" from Chicago was is-
sued, in the shape of some of Barbara
Abel's genial verses. "Lucy, ere you buy
your ticket, don't you know Chicago's
wicked?" they adjured her.
Deaths
J^ANIEL W. MAcCORMACK, head
of the immigration and naturalization
service of the U. S. Department of Labor,
His death, said Secretary Frances
Perkins, "is a desperate loss both to the
department and to the country."
MARY H. INGHAM, of Bryn Mawr, Pa.,
widely known throughout the state for
her devoted service to forces for civic
and social betterment. She was an active
advocate of woman's suffrage, and in 1920
led a state campaign for a new state
constitution and ballot simplification.
GEORGE B. NEUMANN, head of the so-
ciology department of Buffalo State
Teachers College.
ROY W. PILLING, director of the Los An-
geles, Calif. County Relief Administra-
tion. Mr. Pilling, a banker, entered relief
work in 1933 as a field representative
for the state relief administration.
FREDERIC KERNOCHAN, chief justice of the
New York City court of special sessions,
widely known for his social welfare ac-
tivities, particularly with the Boy Scouts.
LEON W. GOLDRICH, since its inception
the director of the Bureau of Child Guid-
ance of New York City public schools,
author and active worker in many pro-
jects for maladjusted children.
HORATIO G. LLOYD, chairman of Philadel-
phia's Committee for Unemployment Re-
lief during the early years of the depres-
sion, and one of the founders and an
active vice-president of the Philadelphia
Welfare Federation.
HERBERT N. SHENTON, head of the de-
partment of sociology at Syracuse Uni-
versity, N. Y., and actively associated
with the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.
ELSIE N. QUIGGLE, twenty-five years ago
a district secretary of Cleveland's Asso-
ciated Charities and more recently home
service secretary of the Greater Cleve-
land chapter of the American Red Cross.
IRENE H. SUTLIFFE, pioneer in nursing
education and directress emeritus of the
nursing school of New York Hospital.
MARY JOHNSTON, at one time with the
Institute for Social and Religious Re-
search, later statistician of the New
York State Charities Aid Association, and
since 1931 research assistant in the Char-
ity Organization Department of the Rus-
sell Sage Foundation.
58
THE SURVEY
Readers Write
Well Worth Trying
To THE EDITOR: Would it be possible for
The Survey to point up its present list-
ing of pamphlets with an occasional re-
capitulation, under general headings,
mentioning the price, if any, of each
item?
Many workers on state staffs have
such small salaries that buying books is
almost out of the question. Frequently
the library facilities to which they have
access are very inadequate. But with a
little effort much useful reference ma-
terial can be gathered — pamphlets, re-
prints and the like — which has elements
of choice and which makes possible the
pursuit of special interests with a very
small outlay of capital. It is surprising
what 50 cents or a dollar a month will
buy. Such an office library of current
pamphlets and reprints, each one stapled
into a manila folder, can be kept in the
drawer of a file cabinet. A 10-cent store
card index will serve for cataloguing and
keeping track of circulation.
MARY L. GARDNER
Bureau of Public Assistance
Technical Training Division
Social Security Board
Honesty Begins at Home
To THE EDITOR: The need of these times
as of all times is for good honest citizens
— not half honest, for no one can be
half honest any more than he can be half
free. The home is traditionally the train-
ing ground of character, where discipline
is imposed until a code of honor emerges,
so definite that truth, distinctions between
mine and thine, and unselfish service are
a matter of course. Yet in many American
homes today, among families of favored
origin, there are lapses from integrity
as demoralizing to robust character as
the action of termites to a wooden
structure. I refer to the countenancing of
souvenir "lifting" and of vandalism for
which the plain old fashioned word is
thieving. Not only do the elders tolerate
the practice in the young, but they them-
selves engage in it, as a sort of game,
without regard for the implication or the
example. It is an ugly habit which is
growing and which in large establishments
assumes serious proportions. The cost of
petty theft and malicious mischief in a
single New York hotel adds up to $50,-
000 annually.
Any one of those hotel pilferers could
have afforded to buy his souvenirs ; what
he really wanted was the excitement of
stealing them, an excitement which he
carried back to the family at home.
Churches and character building or-
ganizations do what they can to counter-
act adverse influences in the community,
but the real roots of character are formed
in family life. No family which counten-
ances petty thieving and petty graft can
develop character in its members. The
more favorably placed the family, the
greater its obligation.
A good beginning could be made by
house-cleaning out every pilfered souvenir
and returning it to its rightful owner.
GERTRUDE S. TROWBRIDGE
Washington, D. C.
Echo from London
To THE EDITOR : Somewhat tardily I must
tell you that the day the August issue of
The Survey reached me I could not get
on with anything else until I had read
every word of Mrs. June Purcell Guild's
report of the International Conference of
Social Work. Writing with the pen of an
expert, she brought in everybody who
mattered and lots of delightful back-
ground in addition. I was always on the
lookout for her at the conference, hoping
to be of service in supplying information.
I know now that my anxiety was vain,
as she already was far better posted than
I could have made her.
J. C. PRINGLE
Secretary, Charity Organization Society
London, England
No More Juggling
To THE EDITOR: Before we can get very
far in dealing with unemployment, we
must arrive at a proper and generally
accepted definition of what it actually is.
In the early months of the depression we
liberalized for relief purposes our com-
monly accepted definition, a liberalization
which is now becoming solidified and
which holds serious implications. For ex-
ample, can the casual, odd-job worker be
considered unemployed when for a brief
period of time there are no odd jobs? Can
the farm hand at $30 a month, with
board, room, and gasoline for his car, be
defined as unemployed during the three
or four winter months, when only a few
years ago he saved enough during his
working months to carry himself through?
Can the beet worker who contracts to
handle a plot at so much an acre and
who, formerly, with the aid of casual
jobs, lived through the winter on his
summer earnings, be considered unem-
ployed when the beet harvest is through?
Can the shop employe in great seasonal
industries be considered unemployed
when, by the very nature of the industry
as it is organized today, he works forty
instead of fifty-two weeks in the year?
All of these questions are germaine to
a proper economic and workable definition
of unemployment, without which figures
and estimates are worth no more than
the paper they are written upon, except
for polemic purposes. Of course, it is well
established that anything can be proved
by statistics, and the possibility of this
increases with the size of the field. In
short, a very slight juggling of the basis
for an unemployment count wherein mil-
lions are involved easily can distort any
picture to support any premise.
This problem is too great for us to
brook any further juggling in definition.
As long as we accept, even tacitly, such
definitions of unemployment as are indi-
cated in the examples I have cited, we
will tend to undermine the economic inde-
pendence and integrity of a large number
of our people. If the man or woman who
has casual employment — granting of
course that, in view of its casual nature,
it is paid for at a proper wage — can turn
to federally supported employment the
day after his private job is ended, we are
encouraging a lack of self-dependence
within a part of our population which,
whether we like it or not, requires a cer-
tain constant, economic pressure if it is to
maintain itself by its own efforts.
ERNEST W. CORN
Works Progress Administration
Denver, Colo.
Heart Warmers
To THE EDITOR : I want you to know how
much I appreciate my happy experience
with your magazine. It proved my most
valuable source of information for a term
paper in sociology in the university last
summer. My grade was A, and my pro-
fessor complimented me and urged me to
keep my Survey file intact — which I was
doing anyway.
Texas H. M.
To THE EDITOR: I regret the need of
writing this letter, but in these critical
days one has to accept the march of
events. When I sent in my renewal blank,
I had all the hope in the world that my
church would be one that could be relied
on to pay regularly. Unfortunately, it has
proved otherwise, and I am obliged,
with deep regret, to cancel my renewal.
Depression days have been hard, here in
Vermont. Prosperity departed to the cities
and has not come back to the villages and
in many cases probably never will. Milk
is money here — but the farmers are get-
ting practically nothing. Recently their
usual monthly checks have been cut al-
most in half. The more I see of the milk
business and its "cooperative" marketing
as now handled, the more I wonder that
Vermont didn't "go with the nation!"
When times improve I shall become
once more a reader of your magazine.
Vermont E. G. W.
FEBRUARY 1937
59
Book Re vi e ws
And How They Grew
THE TENEMENTS OF CHICAGO, by Edith
Abbott, University of Chicago Press, 505 pp.
Price $5 postpaid of The Survey.
*1pHE preface to Miss Abbott's book
•*• disarms criticism. "The limitations of
this volume are clear," it states. "We
have attempted some studies of tenement
conditions in a great metropolitan area
which, almost within the memory of men
now living, has grown out of the swamps
and prairies. . . . We have attempted only
a study of tenement districts and their
history."
While the scope of the study is limited,
it suffices to show the truth of the declara-
tion of the French Assembly in 1789 that:
"Ignorance, neglect and contempt of hu-
man rights are the sole causes of public
misfortunes and corruptions of govern-
ment." For those who had some vision of
better things, the conditions of the de-
velopment of Chicago imposed unusually
great difficulty. There is an excellent dia-
gram of Chicago showing the boundaries
of the original city and the date of each
extension of the boundaries by annexation
or otherwise. The low, flat prairie made
drainage very difficult and costly. The area
of the city as incorporated in 1837 was
only about ten square miles. Outside
that area villages grew up with little re-
gard for plan and probably no regulation
of buildings. The city had the misfortune,
therefore, to take over areas developed
under rural conditions. Little was known
of any proper regulation of buildings ;
much damage was done before the city
could exert control; and after the annexa-
tion of various areas the city was slow to
conceive of regulation. It was slow in
establishing a proper water supply and
proper drainage — and drainage was diffi-
cult and costly.
For such a city it would have been diffi-
cult to assimilate a small additional
population, even if the newcomers were
educated and reasonably efficient. Unfor-
tunately, growth was very rapid and the
incoming population was largely of for-
eign birth, speaking various languages,
with no knowledge of English, and fitted
only for the lowest paid forms of labor.
What all this meant to the unfortunate
people who came to Chicago is described
at length in terms of poverty, disease, and
houses not adapted to receive such a
population.
Very little intelligent regulation of tene-
ment houses had been accomplished in the
United States before the New York
Tenement House Law was adopted in
1901. That law was a compromise, based
on the prevailing use of narrow lots for-
tunately not more than 100 feet deep,
while in Chicago the lots were said to be
usually 125 feet deep. The New York
law exerted a good influence in many
cities; but, again unfortunately, cities
much smaller than New York, which
could have done much better, rarely did
as well.
From the record presented in this book
it seems that much more effort was ex-
pended in curing the disease of bad hous-
ing than in preventing its spread. Even to
this day, there seems to have been little
progress. The book makes sad reading,
not only because it describes evil condi-
tions but because there is little reference
to any efforts that have been made to
bring about better conditions for the
future.
In addition to poverty, there are
remediable causes of bad housing and
some of these have been attacked in Chi-
cago. Illinois, by its constitution of 1851,
is cursed with as bad a tax system as any
in the United States. The commission
appointed by Governor Altgeld, which re-
ported in 1893, made a valiant and intel-
ligent effort to rid the state of the consti-
tutional restraint upon the taxing power
and to bring about by statute a modern
method of assessment. There have been
efforts for a better plan for the city, and
method of assessment. There have been
efforts to obtain a better housing code,
and some accomplishment. It would have
been heartening to have found some brief
description of these strivings for better
things which point the way to improved
conditions in the future.
New York LAWSON PURDY
Pictures for Parents
MOTHER AND BABY CARE IN PICTURES,
by Louise Zabriskie. Lippincott, 196 pp. Price
$1.50 cloth, $1 paper, postpaid of The Sitrzry.
DREPARED in attractive form, this
book provides help for the mother
during the prenatal period, as well as
after the baby is born. Although the in-
formation is planned for the instruction
of mothers, some of it might well be used
in teaching students of medicine and nurs-
ing. Much information of practical value
is given, in few and simple words, with a
large number of useful illustrations.
Miss Zabriskie has chosen the subjects
for the illustrations with care, so that
nearly every picture teaches a valuable
lesson. For example, the photographs
showing the details of caring for the baby,
such as weighing, feeding, and bathing,
are excellent. However, the diagrams
showing the size of the baby's stomach at
various ages might lead the mother to
think that the baby could not take more
than the small amounts of food specified.
It is well known that the size of the stom-
ach varies with the amount of food taken
into it, and that some of the food begins
to pass out of the stomach almost as soon
as it is taken in. The diagram showing the
intra-uterine growth of the infant and
that showing normal body structure are
undoubtedly of great value in helping the
mother to understand the instructions
given for prenatal care. One questions if
the photographs showing some of the de-
tails of the process of birth, are of any
practical help to a mother.
In the section on artificial feeding,
where the mother is directed to boil the
milk mixture, the reasons for this pre-
caution might well have been given, and
its importance emphasized. The section
on sunlight includes a table from a Ca-
nadian source, giving the number of min-
utes a day for sun baths. Obviously these
figures are not suitable for use in regions
warmer and sunnier than Canada.
Miss Zabriskie has rightly stressed the
father's responsibilties, and offers advice
to both parents. Fathers, as well as moth-
ers, should learn from such books as this
what constitutes good maternal and in-
fant care, and should demand such care.
ETHEL C. DUNHAM, M.D.
U. S. Children's Bureau
Washington, D. C.
Breeding Personality
THE IDEAL SCHOOL, by B. B. Bogoslovsky.
Macmiilan. 525 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
COLID, and at times telling whacks
^ against the philosophy of progressive
education are brought out in Mr. Bogo-
slovsky's new book. The author appears
to be a man of intelligence who knows
and understands modern education.
Hitherto, many leading critics of the new
school have been "stuffed shirts." This
one knows all the terms — activity leading
to further activity, the child-centered
school, a curriculum arising from the
present needs of the children, and so on.
Apparently he once believed in all this.
But it is his present belief that the philoso-
phy of modern education, as enunciated by
Dewey and Kilpatrick, is full of fallacies
and contradictions. He quotes Mark
Twain as saying, "It makes no difference
what you teach a boy, so long as he hates
it." The new education, Mr. Bogoslovsky
says, goes to the opposite extreme and in-
sists that it makes no "difference what
you teach a child so long as he likes it."
He does not believe that "activity lead-
ing to more activity" is the open sesame
to all that is good and desirable. The busi-
ness man who is continually expanding his
business, to the neglect of his wife, his
children and his own soul, may be follow-
ing the tenets of modern education, but
not those of the ideal life, according to
Mr. Bogoslovsky.
He believes in indoctrination, and he
cannot conceive of any school where in-
doctrination does not exist. The graduates
of progressive schools are indoctrinated,
60
strongly and vehemently, against indoc-
trination, he declares. They are blase,
sophisticated, strong in one particular —
salesmen for the type of education they
have had. The author falls down, it seems
to this reviewer, when he presents his
concept of the ideal school, as a mystical,
far-fetched dramatic sort of place, a hy-
brid of a Carnegie Hall concert, a Holly-
wood adaptation of a prophetic novel by-
Wells and a March of Time film.
The creation of a beautiful personality,
capable of great friendships, of beautiful
feelings and thoughts, of appreciation and
love of all that is fine in all arts — music,
the dance, painting, sculpture, drama, lit-
erature, nature, the use of the voice, the
movements of the body — this, he holds,
should be the main concern of the school.
Mr. Bogoslovsky describes the new
education which he advocates as "person-
alism." He believes that you can "breed"
a personality in the same way as you can
train a mathematician and a shoemaker.
To his ideal school come professional dan-
cers and dramatic talent; the institution
abounds in good music and the arts.
Overshadowing these influences are the
great personalities of the past, which the
students assiduously study and bring back
to life on the campus. The whole tempo
of the school is orchestrated to music,
"velvety lights" and scents of various
kinds; for, says the author, "odors build
much more powerful 'conditioned reflexes'
. . . than other 'stimuli.' "
The book is interesting, but frequently
irritating because of its mysticism. The
horticulturist who works for a new flow-
er has some notion of what people want,
or for what they are willing to pay
money. When it comes to personality,
what is "good" and what is "beautiful"?
Is there one kind of a good life, or are
there many, depending on the individual
and his objectives?
The Ideal School is written in fictional
form, which adds to the interest, but
makes the work more verbose. The plot
is concerned with a group of educators
who have come to make a survey of this
new school. One realizes its artificiality
when characters make uninterrupted
speeches lasting several pages.
New York SAMUEL TENENBAUM
Relief, Yesterday
UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF IN PERIODS
OF DEPRESSION; A STUDY OF MEASURES
ADOPTED IN CERTAIN AMERICAN CITIES, 1857-
1922, by Leah H. Feder. Russell Sace Founda-
tion. 384 pp. Price, $2.50 postpaid of The Sur-
vey.
J-TERE is a scholarly and detailed study
of the relief measures adopted in a
number of American communities during
six major depressions. Miss Feder points
out that, during each of the recurring
emergencies, measures were embarked
upon quite evidently without understand-
ing or appreciation of previously tried
remedies. As others have observed, recov-
ery has always had an "anesthetizing
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
ADVANCE ANNOUNCEMENT
SOCIAL WORK YEAR BOOK, 1937
Edited by RUSSELL H. KURTZ
NEW in its editor — NEW in its material — NEW
the vast changes occurring in social work as a result
and kindred recent legislation. The book is in press,
placed now. Price, $4.00.
in the light it sheds upon
if the Social Security Act
Advance orders may be
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
1 30 East 22nd Street New York
HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL WORK ENGINEERING
By JUNE PURCELL GUILD and ARTHUR ALDEN GUILD
A book valuable to public welfare workers, social case workers,
medical workers, and those employed in other fields of social work
by providing methods of organizing to meet the social problems of
their communities. Agency board members join professional social
workers in proclaiming Social Work Engineering as something new
in the field of social organization and financial support, practical,
readable, authoritative.
$1.50 prepaid from The Survey
effect upon our memory." This regrettable
disregard of "the lessons of history" is
the raison d'etre of the present study.
As the measures adopted by individual
communities can be considered intelligent-
ly only against the background of the
capacity of previously existing agencies to
meet the new needs, and of the attitudes
of local communities toward the whole
problem of relief, the author devotes
many pages to supplying this information
for each of the localities studied, during
each of the six depressions. If the reader
hopes to find a panacea for the relief prob-
lems of any community during any emer-
gency, he is doomed to disappointment. As
the author points out, many experiments
which were successful in particular cities,
met with general criticism, or ended in
failure when tried in other communities
with different traditions and attitudes.
That the social philosophy underlying
measures adopted in the various parts of
the country' should have changed some-
what, during succeeding depressions, is not
surprising in view of the fact that modern
social work saw its rise and probably most
phenomenal development during the years
covered by this study. However, it had
not yet been clearly borne in on the coun-
try as a whole, that many sections of the
nation lacked the leadership, the financial
resources and the coordinating organiza-
tion of federal, state and local agencies of
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
61
government to make adequate provisions
for care of those thrown on relief during
the downward trends of our still recur-
ring business cycles.
As an historic document, Miss Feder's
book bears the earmarks of careful schol-
arship. One can only hope that the author
will soon add to the volume under review
a second one devoted to the relief meas-
ures of the recent economic crisis. Unless
one believes that this was just another
depression, and that recurrences of such
crises will be replicas of those before the
Second Industrial Revolution, the review-
er can not but believe that we have more
to learn from the new and vast experi-
ments undertaken in meeting the passing
emergency than from the lessons of all
previous depressions combined. Never be-
fore in history had America been faced
with the threat of mass starvation. Never
before had local relief, both private and
public, proved so inadequate to meet the
burdens placed upon it. Most of the tra-
ditional ideas and methods of providing
unemployment relief have been revealed
as utterly unsuited to the problems of
present-day mass unemployment. They
will have to be discarded, not only as woe-
fully inadequate to meet the needs of a
new era, but also as out of keeping with
the spirit of the times. It is encouraging
to note that gradually there is being set
up a carefully integrated program of fed-
eral, state and local governmental agen-
cies whose function it is, when no suitable
jobs are available, to administer relief to
all citizens in need, not as a mere dole,
but as a right.
Haverford College FRANK D. WATSON
Wise Men to Laity
MEDICINE AND MANKIND: LECTURES TO THE
LAITY DELIVERED AT THE NEW YORK ACADEMY
OF MEDICINE, edited by latto Galdston, M.D.
Appleton-Century. 217 pp. Price $2 postpaid of
The Survey.
' I ''HOUGH it is impossible to ascertain
from the book itself when these lec-
tures were delivered, we may assume that
they are of recent date. Rather more than
half the book deals with excerpts from
the history of medicine, excellently pre-
sented. Then come three chapters on
special medical topics: The Organic Back-
ground of Mind, by Dr. Foster Kennedy;
and The Story of The Vitamins, by Dr.
E. V. McCollum — experts in their sub-
jects. Finally Dr. Alexis Carrel writes on
The Mystery of Death, on which he
knows about as much as the rest of man-
kind.
The chapters by Dr. Kennedy and Di
McCollum seem to me the best in the
book. But all are interesting and not too
technical for general reading. Of the vita-
min researches Dr. McCollum well says,
"They have dramatized nutrition to a de-
gree which has attracted the attention not
only of welfare workers in many coun-
tries but also of governments."
RICHARD C. CABOT, M.D.
Harvard University
Romance in Social History
WELFARE ACTIVITIES OF FEDERAL.
STATE. AN'D LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN
CALIFORNIA, 1850-1934, by Frances Cahn and
Valeska Bary. University of California Press.
422 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
IKE the traveler who gazes backward
down a long valley through which he
has come, the people of California pause
to take stock of eighty years of welfare
planning and practice. The first authentic-
record of that long progress appears in
this beginning volume of the University of
California's new series on interrelation-
ships in governmental functioning.
This is a thorough piece of work, pro-
viding "a perspective of the growth of
some of the public welfare activities" in
the state, and indicating "the development
of relationships of federal, state and local
governments." Discussion of adult offend-
ers and children in industry are omitted,
but only because later volumes are to deal
with them.
Part One deals with the care of chil-
dren, the dependent and neglected, the
delinquent and the handicapped; every
enactment marks the essential facts that
led up to it and the story of its application.
The authors omit nothing vital, treat
nothing in haste, waste no time on non-
essentials.
The second part is an equally valid
treatment of the care of adults; from the
private contract for the care of unfor-
tunate "forty-niners," through the alms-
house stage to the county hospital. The
great landmark comes in 1903 — the crea-
tion of a state board of charities and cor-
rections. The long story of immigration
through the railroad expansion era with
its dour aftermath, the problem of the
Asiatic, is an absorbing chapter. These
and many more aspects of welfare growth
make this work a storehouse of accurate
information and keen appraisal of trends.
It is social history in terms of exact re-
port. In this saga of its factual develop-
ment lies the true romance of the Golden
State. ROBERT W. KELSO
Michigan Graduate Institute
of Social Work
Focus and Confirmation
NEW LIGHT ON DELINQUENCY AND ITS
TREATMENT, by William Healy, M.D.. and
Augusta F. Bronner. Yale University Press.
226 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
D ATHER than throwing new light on
delinquency this volume confirms and
greatly strengthens the thinking of pro-
gressive clinicians. It recognizes that
multiple rather than single causation is
involved in the delinquency response but it
does not stop at this indeterminate point.
Instead, it brings to a clear focus the fact
that major emotional disturbances existed
in 92 percent of the cases studied. Fur-
thermore, it clearly shows that disturbed
affectional relationships and frustrated
achievement urges are the dominant cau-
sal factors.
In concluding that delinquency is a
form of rational behavior occurring in re-
sponse to satisfaction-seeking drives and
urges, this work culminates previous
writings of the authors and confirms the
observations of Aichhorn, Alexander,
Levy, Kenworthy and others. The method
utilized in establishing a control group of
nondelinquent siblings gives validity to
the observations. The chapters on treat-
ment intrigue the reader through suggest-
ing much that is not fully discussed be-
cause of the summary form of this por-
tion. One wishes for a subsequent volume
devoted to treatment. The relatively ef-
fective therapeutic procedures should
make an invaluable contribution to the
field.
The book will throw new light on de-
linquency as previously comprehended by
many educators, social workers, psycholo-
gists, sociologists and some psychiatrists.
For those who have long been utilizing
psychoanalytic concepts in their interpre-
tation of human behavior, this research
confirms their diagnostic thinking, prac-
tice and teaching. Instructors in graduate
schools of social work will find this an
invaluable text to substantiate their points
of view. The social implications of the
research are wide and it is to be hoped
that the findings will be utilized broadly
in schools, courts and educational projects
with parents. It is believed that the con-
cepts emerging herein have been well
integrated into the practice of progressive
clinical and social case work groups.
CHARLOTTE TOWLE
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago
Psychiatrist's Biography
RECOLLECTIONS OF RICHARD DEWEY.
PIONEER IN AMERICAN PSYCHIATRY, by Clar-
ence B. Farrar, M.D. Edited by Ethel L. Dew-
ey. University of Chicago Press. 173 pp. Price
$2 postpaid of The Survey.
AS history is made up of the lives of
men and the transmutation of their
ideas into action, biography possesses a
constructive value for backgrounds and
for planning.
Dr. Dewey's recollections are a very
readable and pleasant narration of the
simple life in New York State from 1845
to 1870, with some sharp pictures of Ger-
many at the end of the Franco-Prussian
War. The significance of the work lies in
the record of his twenty-two years as a
pioneer psychiatrist, with an especially
rich service at the Kankakee Hospital in
Illinois, at which he introduced the cot-
tage plan, abolished mechanical restraints
and established a training school for psy-
chiatric nurses.
New York IRA S. WILE, M.D.
Harnessing Young Dynamos
YOUTH SERVES THE COMMUNITY, by Paul
R. Hanna. Appleton-Century. 303 pp. Price $2
postpaid of The Survey.
T~*HE rare combination of readability
with authoritative and professional
research in social and educational fields
is accomplished in Professor Hanna's
book. Advanced and liberal educators to-
day recognize that, until formal education
has reorganized itself along more realistic
lines, some nexus must be found between
the classroom and communal life. In com-
munal life, I include all the extra school
activities that make up the American com-
munity, civic, business and recreational.
Professor Hanna has made a survey of
substantially all the organized youth
activities in the United States that might
come within those three categories. With
selected samples of these activities, he
shows how youth contributes to public
safety, civic beauty, community health,
agricultural and industrial employment,
and to civic arts.
The activities are projects initiated by
the youths themselves, and usually spon-
sored by some adult group. Criteria of
usefulness are laid down by Professor
Hanna as follows:
The youth who participate in a project
must sense its social significance.
Youth must have a part in planning the
project.
Youth must have some sporting chance
of carrying the project proposed through
to more or less successful conclusion.
62
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
Library Service
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 520
North Michigan Ave., Chicago. To aid in
the extension and improvement of library
service.
Child Welfare
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA—
C. C. Carstens, director, 130 E. 22nd Street,
New York City. A league of children's agen-
cies and institutions to secure improved
standards and methods in their various fields
of work. It also co-operates with other chil-
dren's agencies, cities, states, churches, fra-
ternal orders and other civic groups to work
out worth-while results in phase of child
welfare in which they are interested.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSER-
IES— 130 East 22nd Street, New York City.
To federate day nurseries in the U. S. and
assist them to establish and maintain ap-
proved standards of care.
Community Chests
COMMUNITY1 CHESTS AND COUNCILS, INC.
— IBS East 44th Street, New York. Informa-
tion and consultation about cooperative plan-
ning and financing of social work through
chests and councils of social agencies.
Foundations
AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND,
INC. — 15 West 16th Street, New York. A
national organization for research and field
service. Activities include : assistance to state
and local agencies in organizing activities
and promoting legislation ; research in legis-
lation, vocations, statistics, and mechanical
appliances for the blind : maintenance of a
reference lending library. M. C. Migel, Presi-
dent ; Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATIpN— For the Im-
provement of Living Conditions — Shelby M.
Harrison, Director ; 130 E. 22nd St., New
York. Departments : Charity Organization,
Delinquency and Penology, Industrial Stu-
dies, Library, Recreation, Remedial Loans,
Social Work Interpretation, Social Work
Year Book, Statistics, Surveys. The publica-
tions of the Russell Sage Foundation offer
to the public in practical and inexpensive
form some of the most important results of
its work. Catalogue sent upon request.
Industrial Democracy
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY—
Promotes a better understanding of problems
of democracy in industry through iU
pamphlet, research and lecture services and
organization of college and city groups. Ex-
ecutive Directors, Harry W. Laidler and
Norman Thomas, 112 East 19th Street, New
York City.
Drop a Line
to the
HELP WANTED COLUMNS
SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
when ia need of worker!
Health
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL
HYGIENE, INC.— Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles,
president ; Dr. C. M. Hincks, general direc-
tor ; Clifford W. Beers, secretary : 50 West
50th Street, New York City. Pamphlets on
mental hygiene, child guidance, mental
disease, mental defect, psychiatric social
work and other related topics. Catalogue of
publications sent on request. "Mental Hy-
giene," quarterly, $3.00 a year.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR PUBLIC
HEALTH NURSING— 50 W. 50th St.. New
York. Dorothy Deming, R. N., Gen. Dir.
Advisory service, statistics, monthly maga-
zine.
NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION—
50 West 50th Street, New York. Dr. Kendall
Emerson, managing director. Pamphlets of
methods and program for the prevention of
tuberculosis. Publications sold and distributed
through state associations in every state.
American Review of Tuberculosis, medical
journal, $8.00 a year ; and Monthly Bulletin,
house organ, free.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE— A
Clearing House, cooperating with social work-
ers in referring indigent mothers to medically
directed birth control clinics in 41 states, in-
cluding 17 centers in Greater New York. In
areas lacking centers, qualified physicians are
available. Phone or write: 515 Madison
Avenue, New York City. WIckersham 2-8600.
President: Clarence Cook Little. Medical
Director: Eric M. Matsner, M.D.
New York City
THE BIRTH CONTROL CLINICAL RESEARCH
BUREAU, 17 West 16th Street: MARGARET
SANGER, Director : has added evening ses-
sions, Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
from 7 to 9 P.M., for the benefit of mothers
who work and cannot come to the Clinic
daily from 9 to 4.
National Conference
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL
WORK— Edith Abbott, President, Chicago ;
Howard R. Knight, Secretary, 82 N. High
St., Columbus, O. The Conference is an
organization to discuss the principles of
humanitarian effort and to increase the
efficiency of social service agencies. Each
year it holds an annual meeting, publishes
in permanent form the Proceedings of the
meeting, and issues a quarterly Bulletin.
The sixty-fourth annual convention of the
Conference will be held in Indianapolis, Ind.,
May 23-29, 1937. Proceedings are sent free
of charge to all members upon payment of
a membership fee of $5.
Racial Adjustment
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., with its
44 branches improves social conditions of
Negroes seeking "not alms, but opportunity"
for them. Secures and trains social workers.
Investigates conditions of city life as bases
for practical work. Publishes OPPOR-
TUNITY, Journal of Negro Life. Solicits
gifts. 1133 Broadway, New York, N. Y.
Vocational Counsel and Placement
JOINT VOCATIONAL SERVICE, INC.— Offers
vocational information, counsel, and place-
ment in social work and public health nurs-
ing. Non-profit making. Sponsored as na-
tional, authorized agency for these fields by
American Association of Social Workers and
National Organization for Public Health
Nursing, 122 E. 22nd St., New York City.
Religious Organizations
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS
— 105 East 22nd Street, New York City.
The Inter-Denominational body of 23 wo-
men's home missions boards of the United
States and Canada uniting in program and
financial responsibility for enterprises which
they agree to carry cooperatively, such as
Christian social service in Migrant labor
camps, and Christian character building
programs in Indian American government
schools.
President, Mrs. Millard L. Robinson
Executive Secy., Edith E. Lowry
Associate Secy.. Charlotte M. Burnham
Western Field Secy., Adela J. Ballard
Migrant Supervisor, Gulf to Great Lakes
Area, Mrs. Kenneth D. Miller
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN.
INC.— 221 West 57th Street, 9th floor. New
York City. Mrs. Arthur Brin. President:
Mrs. Maurice L. Goldman, Chairman Ex.
Com. ; Mrs. Marion M. Miller. Executive Di-
rector. Organization of Jewish women initi-
ating and developing programs and activities
in service for foreign born, peace, social
legislation, adult Jewish education, and so-
cial welfare. Conducts bureau of interna-
tional service. Serves as clearing bureau for
local affiliated groups throughout the coun-
try.
NATIONAL BOARD, YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATIONS, 600 Lexington Ave.,
New York City. An international Christian
woman movement devoted to service for
women and girls and the attempt to help
build a society in which the abundant life
is possible for every individual.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTION ASSOCIATIONS— 347 Madison
Avenue, New York City. Eskil C. Carlson,
President: John E. Manley, General Secre-
tary. A federation of 1123 local associations,
through state and area councils, for Chris-
tian character education among youth. Meets
annually to determine service projects and
budget for cooperation with local member
organizations in program emphasis and in-
terpretation, fiscal operations, etc. Empha-
sizes lay-professional cooperation, group and
club activity, and self-governing programs
of physical, social and religious education,
public affairs, international education and
special cooperative projects, citizenship, etc.
Specialized work among transportation, army
and navy, student, colored, rural, and certain
other groups.
Recreation
NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION—
315 Fourth Ave., New York City. To bring
to every boy and girl and citizen of America
an adequate opportunity for wholesome,
happy play and recreation.
Is your
organization
listed in
the Survey's
Directory of
Social Agencies?
If not—
why not?
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
63
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
Rates: Display: 21 cents a line, 14 agate lines to the inch. Want advertisements
five cents per word or initial, including address or box number. Minimum charge,
first insertion, $1.00. Cash with orders. Discounts: 5% on three insertions; 10% on
six insertions. Address Advertising Department.
ALGONQUIN 4-7490 SURVEY MIDMONTHLY NEW YORK* CITY
WORKERS WANTED
National organization, established, unique,
engaging, seeks field worker to expand mem-
bership in various cities. Should have back-
ground of acquaintance with social work and
movements and experience in raising money.
Address 7403 c/o Survey.
Large
ing iur wuiiutu WILII experience in oeiue-
ment field, to head up all activities in group
work. Address letter with full details to
7411 Survey.
Settlement not in New York, has open-
for woman with experience in Settle-
SITUATIONS WANTED
Graduate student, fellowship social case work,
wants part-time work ; evenings, Saturdays
and Sundays. B.S. in Economics. Experi-
enced in hack work on thesis, books, typing.
Works well with children. 7410 Survey.
Cultured, middle-aged woman. Episcopalian,
trained social worker, wishes position as di-
rector of school or institution for children or
adolescents or Settlement House. Experi-
enced executive. Excellent social and pro-
fessional references. 7412 Survey.
Single young man of good habits, desires posi-
tion in private greenhouse, chauffeur, night-
watchman, handyman or caretaker. Will ac-
cept any type of work. Experienced. Can
furnish excellent references. 7401 Survey.
American Negro Ph.D. (Jan., 1937) University
of Dijon, France ; college teaching experience ;
wants directorship of boys* work or princi-
palship of an agricultural school in the
Americas or Africa. 7408 Survey.
CAMP DIRECTOR— Outstanding expert and
authority on children's camps available this
summer. Top-notch progressive organizer.
Unexcelled successful experience. Corres-
pondence confidential. Box 7407 Survey.
Your Own Agency
This is the counseling and placement agency
sponsored jointly by the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers and the National
Organization for Public Health Nursing.
National. Non-profit making.
( Agency)
122 East 22nd Street, 7th floor. New York
GERTRUDE R. STEIN, INC.
Vocational Service Agency
11 East 44th Street NEW YORK
MUrray Hill 2-4784
A professional employment bureau specializing
in social service, institutional, dietetic, medical,
publicity, advertising and secretarial positions.
SITUATION WANTED
Experienced corrective speech teacher, trained
in psychiatric approach, also experienced in
tutoring, desires position June, July, August.
7404 Survey.
to EMPLOYERS
Who Are Planning to Increase Their Staffs
We Supply:
Executives
Case Workers
Recreation Workers
Psychiatric Social Workers
Occupational Therapists
Dietitians
Housekeepers
Matrons
Housemothers
Teachers
Grad. Nurses
Sec'y-Stenogs.
Stenographers
Bookkeepers
Typists
Telephone Operators
HOLMES EXECUTIVE PERSONNEL
One East 42nd Street
Agency Tel.: MU 2-7575 Gertrude D. Holmes, Director
New York City
THE BOOK SHELF
"THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
AND ORGANIZED LABOR"
by A. J. MUSTB
Gives facts on sales and wages and
organization before the strike.
I'ri c ] r,r — reductions for Quantity orders.
CHRISTIAN SOCIAL JUSTICE FUND
513 Park Avenue Baltimore, Md.
LOG OF THE TVA
By Arthur E. Morgan
Director of the TVA
An attractive paper-bound book, containing all
instalments of the story of the TVA, written
by its Director.
50c each postpaid
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
112 E. 19 St. New York, N. Y.
"THE NEXT GREAT PLAGUE TO GO"
By Thomas Parran
Surgeon General, U.S.P.H.S.
Thousands sold. A new supply is now avail-
able with charts which accompany the article.
lOc each
Greatly reduced rates in quantity
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
112 E. 19 St. NeV York, N. Y.
PAMPHLETS AND PERIODICALS
The American Journal of Nursing shows the part
which professional nurses take in the better-
ment of the world. Put it in your library. J3.00
a year. 50 West BO Street, New York, N. Y.
SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
SEEMAN BROS.,
Groceries
INC.
Hudson and North Moore Streets
New York
LITERARY SERVICES
Special articles, theses, speeches, papers. Re-
search, revision, bibliographies, etc. Over
twenty years' experience serving busy pro-
fessional persons. Prompt service extended.
AUTHORS RESEARCH BUREAU, 616
Fifth Avenue. New York, N. Y.
Youth must accept the responsibility
for success or failure of the project.
Youth must actually grow in total per-
sonality as a result of the work under-
taken.
Any project must culminate in the
actual improvement of living in the com-
munity.
Projects must be clearly an obligation
of youth as well as adulthood.
Insofar as possible, projects must get
at the basic problems of improving social
welfare.
The fact that the book contains a
preface and foreword and an introduction,
as well as a substantial appendix, bibliog-
raphy and index, does not in any way in-
terfere with its readability. W. Carson
Ryan, Jr., chairman of the publications
committee of the Progressive Education
Association, supplied the foreword. The
introduction, entitled The Underlying
Philosophy of Cooperative Activities for
Community Improvement, by William H
Kilpatrick of Teachers College, is an es-
say full of substance and of outstanding
literary merit. His definition of philoso-
phy, "a conscious application of plain com-
mon sense," is an example of the pithiness
of his paper. The research was done by
a WPA staff. (Project No. 65—97—295,
Sub-project No. 26)
Everyone interested in the youth prob-
lem should read this book, without fail.
New York CHARLES TAUSSIG
Hospital Administration
ADMINISTRATIVE PSYCHIATRY, by William
A. Bryan, M.D. Norton. 349 pp. Price $3.50
postpaid of The Survey.
A LONG awaited and much needed
work on the methods of administra-
tion of state hospitals. The author, a well
known superintendent, who conducts an
equally well known and an excellent insti-
tution, the Worcester State Hospital in
Massachusetts, has given us an admirable
survey of his conceptions of the functions
of administration. The book can be rec-
ommended to medical officers in state
hospitals.
WILLIAM A. WHITE, M.D.
Washington, D. C.
Run of the Shelves
PROBLEMS OF THE FAMILY, by Willystine
Goodsell. Appleton-Century. 510 pp. Price $3.50
postpaid of The Survey.
A REVISED edition of a work published
eight years ago. Factual and statistical in-
formation is brought up to date and em-
phasis shifted in line with recent advances
in scholarship.
PRACTICAL EXAMINATION OF PERSON-
ALITY AND BEHAVIOR DISORDERS.
ADULTS AND CHILDREN, by Kenneth E. Appel.
M.D. and Edward A. Strieker, M.U. Macmillan.
219 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
THIS is a practical manual setting forth
the technique of psychiatric observation
and notation employed at the School of
Medicine at the University of Pennsyl-
vania, and in the Department of Nervous
and Mental Diseases of the Pennsylvania
Hospital. It is a book well arranged for
the guidance of students of psychiatry in
the art of interrogating patients. It is also
helpful in facilitating student insight con-
cerning the basis for personal and be-
havior disorders.
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MAR 15 jgo7
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Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor,
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIPPLE, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRIGO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
MARCH 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 3
These Public Welfare Boards ROBERT T. LANSDALE 67
Relief in the Sit-Down Strike 69
Social Workers Report and Forecast RUTH A. LERRIGO 71
High Water High Marks .73
Miss Bailey Says . . .
"Children Aren't Trash" GERTRUDE SPRINGER 75
Behavior As It Is Behaved — V
The Andersons Reform ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 77
Tsh! Tsh! Tsh! A. D. WINSLOW 78
The Common Welfare 79
The Social Front 81
Public Assistance • WPA • Relief • Against Crime • The
Insurances • Schools and Education • Professional • Social
Hygiene • The Public's Health • Hospitals • People and
Things • The Pamphlet Shelf
Readers Write 90
Book Reviews 91
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• One of the finest and friendliest things
time does is to fly. — Editorial, The Christian
Century.
• I do not think it is pampering a prisoner
to give him butter on his bread. — BERT YELLS,
sheriff, Seneca County, N.Y.
• It will take something more than a horror
campaign against crime to rid America of
crime. — LEWIS GANNETT in New York Her-
ald Tribune.
• Justice is not itself peace, but it must be
the basis of any peace that is to endure and
grow. — The REV. JOSEPH FORT NEWTON,
Philadelphia.
• We are in the era of democracy of infor-
mation. We have not reached the era of
democracy of intelligence. — MOSES STRAUSS,
managing editor, Cincinnati Times-Star.
• In the whole matter of relief we are so-
cially illiterate and we are dealing with public
opinion that, by and large, is also socially
illiterate. — FRANK KINGDON, president, New-
ark University, N.J.
• Nothing throws such fear of the law into
young hoodlums and potential criminals as
a sound whipping by authority. ... I favor
adding to the school staff of the city a few
strong men who shall do all the whipping,
going from school to school as needed. —
FRANK J. LOESCH, former president, Chicago
Crime Commission.
So They Say
• Neither the movies nor the radio has yet
reached the point where they can be relied
on to make people wise. — ROBERT M.
HUTCHINS, president, University of Chicago.
• Jn our personal ambitions we are indi-
vidualists, but in seeking for economic and
political progress as a nation we all go up —
or else we all go down — as one people. —
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.
• Our children would know what to do with
decent homes if they had them. . . . Give us
decent homes and you will have decent citi-
zens.— IDA HARRIS, president, New York
League of Mothers Clubs.
• War really isn't anybody's fault. It is
everybody's fault. War is always the sum of
all the mistakes everybody makes from the
last peace treaty to the next ultimatum. —
Editorial, New York World Telegram.
• Systematically through new inventions and
improvements, business has created dissatis-
faction— stimulated the whole people to want
more and better things. — LEWIS H. BROWN,
president, ] ohns-M anville Corporation.
• The mere possession of information, how-
ever multiform and however accurate, is no
test or assurance whatsoever that an educa-
tion has been had or even begun. — NICHOLAS
MURRAY BUTLER, president, Columbia Uni-
versity.
• Paupers aren't paupers the way they used
to be. — New England state official.
• Moral idealists of different stripes never
get along well together. — REINHOLD NIEBUHR
in The Christian Century.
• There never were any victories in any war
and there never will be any. Who won the
San Francisco earthquake? — CONGRESSMAN
MAURY MAVERICK, Texas.
• Over twenty-two million people have ap-
plied for social security. All these policies
were sold without the use of agents, calendars
or blotters. — HOWARD BRUBAKER in The New
Yorker.
• When you are making up criminal records
you can put the slum at the top of the list
as the worst killer in America. — AUSTIN H.
MACCORMICK, commissioner of correction, New
York City.
• Housing does not deal alone with bricks
and lumber but with men and women; it is
not merely an effort to change some of the
architecture of the nation but to change some
facets of human nature. — Christian Science
Monitor.
• Nothing alarms America so much as rifts,
divisions, the drifting apart of elements among
her people. The thing we all ought to strive
for is to close up every rift, and the only
way to do it, so far as I can see, is to estab-
lish justice, justice with a heart in it, justice
with a pulse in it, justice with sympathy
in it. — WOODROW WILSON to the American
Federation of Labor, 1916.
Herblock for NEA Service
Herblock for NEA Service
The Seven Ages of Man
As They May Appear in Federal Law
Our Government Has Its Stork-Derby Problem, Too
6VM
WR A *bRKoyT HARRV—
CAW MtLT SOM6
Carlisle in The 57. Loui'.t Glabe-D
The Harry Hopkins School of Reducing
THE SURVEY
MARCH 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 3
These Public Welfare Boards
By ROBERT T. LANSDALE
Committee on Public Administration, Social Science Research Council, Washington, D. C.
BOARDS of public welfare are a reality in this coun-
try. To a certain extent they always have been.
Just now, under the stimulus of the Social Security
Act their numbers and visibility are increasing rapidly.
At a conservative estimate, omitting boards of managers
of public institutions, we have now at least 3000 going,
legally constituted public welfare boards in our various
political subdivisions.
It is never too late to discuss ideals and aims in the com-
position and functions of these boards, but after a year or
so of close observation of the operation of a number of
them, state and local, I cannot escape the conclusion that
more important at this juncture than airing our aspirations
is a candid facing of the realities that exist. We are not
dealing with something new, to be built from the ground
up. We are dealing with a going concern entrenched in
local traditions and customs and fortified by statute. Prog-
ress can come, it seems to me, only if we are willing to
analyze and evaluate what we have.
How much, really, do we know about the operations of
public welfare boards? By and large, what responsibilities
do they execute well, and what badly ? Why do boards with
similar powers in law differ so markedly in their methods
of executing their responsibilities?
Personally I believe that we are still on an emotional
level when we talk about citizen boards, with most of our
thinking still confused. We have not subjected these bodies
to the same scrutiny given to other parts of our public wel-
fare machinery.
At one of the sessions of the last National Conference of
Social Work three papers, each with considerable merit,
were swept together into one program and into one pro-
longed acclaim for boards. Few in the audience seemed to
realize, however, that they had been led from the uncritical
statement that social workers ought to encourage the for-
mation of boards of public welfare because boards have
been so useful in private agencies (applause), on through
a scrambling of advisory, administrative, and appeal func-
tions (applause), to a grand climax which visioned an
idyllic American scene with every function of local govern-
ment managed by a group of self-sacrificing citizens, nobly
motivated (applause).
It is not my intention to discuss the virtues of the admin-
istrative board as opposed to the executive appointment of
the head of a public department. For a long time there has
been plenty of discussion of that subject pro and con. But
in passing it might be noted that the reports of state reor-
ganization commissions of the past few years have recom-
mended, almost invariably, the executive plan if a board
had hitherto functioned, and the board plan if the executive
plan had prevailed. My plea at the moment is that we give
some attention to the thousands of boards we now have,
and see where they are going and how. Regardless of how
the board-versus-executive argument is settled in any one
place at any one time, we are going to have plenty of boards
and probably shall be creating many new and different
varieties.
I wish that some of our able public welfare board mem-
bers and some of our skilled public welfare executives
would analyze and record their experiences, and that some
of our competent researchers would busy themselves with
a close scrutiny of board function and operation. As a pos-
sible stimulus to such endeavor and to a more discriminat-
ing discussion of public boards, I am here recording some
of my notes based upon recent observation of public boards,
although I realize the hazards of being misunderstood when
the limitations of space compel me to deal bluntly with a
subject so complex — and so sacrosanct.
ALTHOUGH the internal management of voluntary
-i\~ and official boards is much the same, their functions
are different. In fact, to stress their similarities is to invite
fundamental misconceptions of a political institution. A
private agency board determines its own functions; the
board of a public agency has its responsibilities delineated
in the law. Although somewhat vaguely representing the
contributors, the board members of a private agency actu-
ally constitute the agency whereas the members of an official
67
board are selected to represent the public in the operation of
the public's business. A private agency is usually created by
the board, which can also dissolve it; a public agency is
created by legislative act and is dissolved by the same
process.
Whether it is good social policy or not, the board of a
private social agency usually has the right to determine its
own course. But when a public board assumes an attitude
of self-sufficiency, it has lost sight of its legal status. One
can be certain that an official board is losing perspective
when it begins to resent public criticism and to regard any
questioning of its actions as a personal attack upon its mem-
bers. Members of official boards, even though not compen-
sated for their services, are no less servants of the public
than salaried employes.
Members of official boards in very small communities,
where funds are limited, frequently must perform them-
selves the functions of the public agency. As soon as an
executive is employed, however, the board must leave the
direct administration of the agency's program to the em-
ploye. Board members who try to perform executive tasks
for which a particular staff member is responsible almost
inevitably bungle the job. The larger and more complex the
organization, the more damaging is independent executive
action by board members.
BOARDS organized for a single type of program seem
to function more effectively than those with a more
complex program to administer. A board member is likely
to be interested in one particular phase of a public depart-
ment's operation — institutional management for example,
or public assistance or inspection of private agencies — but
only rarely does he have a poignant interest in all aspects
of the work or the time to acquaint himself with the total
program. Yet the degree of control of such a board mem-
ber is equal to that of his associates in all matters under
the board's jurisdiction. Effective procedures for preserving
balance of operation of a board responsible for diverse func-
tions can be developed — the New Jersey State Department
of Institutions and Agencies offers a notable example. Di-
versity is, however, a major hazard to the effective function-
ing of a board.
Incidentally, I have come to doubt whether we can long
maintain the supervision and inspection of private agencies
in the hands of a public agency which has the operation of
an extensive public assistance program as its major adminis-
trative responsibility. The two functions are too different
both in approach and method to mix well in execution. The
question of the scope of an agency program, of course, is not
wholly a problem of the board.
The establishment of rules — interpreting "rule" as re-
lating to procedure rather than policy — is a common func-
tion of generalized boards, yet rule-making requires more
attention to day-by-day administration than a board ordi-
narily can give. When a board has many diversified activi-
ties to supervise, its rules almost inevitably become static
through lack of frequent revision. Rule-making has been
performed in some instances quite satisfactorily by a body
which has this as its main responsibility, with members
selected primarily for their qualifications for this particular
task.
Likewise boards with many diverse duties do not func-
tion well as appeal boards, although this is usually one of
their responsibilities. The number of appeals is likely to be-
come so great that the board members either accept un-
qualifiedly the recommendations of the staff or else they
jump to decisions without consideration of the effect of the
action upon agency policy or upon public policy. A sub-com-
mittee selected solely to hear and act upon appeals can
usually do a more judicious job. Dealing with appeals re-
quires a type of individual different from the one who deals
with management policies. Obviously the pace and proce-
dures of a quasi-judicial body are quite different from those
of an administrative body.
When it comes to the selection of personnel, I am con-
vinced that although a board may make a satisfactory selec-
tion of its chief executive, it is sure to get itself and every
one else into difficulties if it chooses subordinate staff mem-
bers. Not only does the board weaken the authority of the
executive officer in so doing but it almost never possesses
the skill or time to do a thorough job of selection. Experi-
ence indicates that its decisions are usually subjective, based
on personal grounds. The board can be of inestimable value
in advising the executive both on selection and dismissal —
but always on his initiative.
Most of the discussions of board usefulness assume that
a board somehow interprets automatically the work of an
agency to the public. In reality this is not true. In fact,
some staffs have proved quite as effective as boards, in pub-
lic interpretation, chiefly because their efforts have contin-
uity and direction. The public is not enlightened concern-
ing a social program by the fact that Mr. John Q. Joiner,
prominent citizen, is a member of the local welfare board,
even though his name on the roster may inspire some con-
fidence. In order to count as interpreters, board members
must be enlisted in an active and planned program. For
example, the state department in Florida sends a staff con-
sultant to work out programs of interpretation with the
district boards and is continuously supplying publicity ma-
terial to the districts. Interpretation by board members can
be developed but is seldom spontaneous as we too often
have assumed.
An evidence of the carelessness with which some boards
take their responsibilities is shown by their inattention to
the form and content of the permanent record made of
their official 'actions. The New York Temporary Emer-
gency Relief Administration has developed the most com-
plete record of board proceedings which I have seen. A
formal record prepared of all meetings includes attendance,
major points of discussion, and all formal action taken. A
concurrent journal is maintained in which are filed a tran-
script of the discussion at each meeting, copies of important
administrative communications, and copies of all official
bulletins and reports. Granting that all boards cannot main-
tain a detailed running account of deliberations, a journal
is certainly a convenient device for the preservation of many
essential documents which, if filed with the formal minutes,
would produce a record too bulky for ready reference but
which should be kept intact as an administrative record.
/CONSIDERING for how long the board system has
V_> been an accepted part of our social welfare machinery
it is surprising how little data have been compiled on effec-
tive methods of board operation. Such data, if they existed,
would be immediately useful to federal and state agencies
responsible for supervising or servicing public bodies in
lesser political subdivisions. For example, supervision of lo-
cally administered public assistance programs places upon
68
THE SURVEY
the state agency a responsibility for advising and directing
the local welfare boards. If the local program is under an
administrative board, the state relations with that body
should be the keystone of the total state-local relationship.
Yet most states seem to leave this phase of supervision until
last, if they undertake it at all. They are much more con-
cerned with staff than with administrative supervision.
Many state departments now provide manuals of adminis-
trative procedure, of fiscal procedure, of social service pro-
cedure, of recording procedure, for the guidance of local
units. A manual of board procedure is equally necessary,
indeed it is overdue.
Probably some of these comments on boards as I have
observed them in operation strike harshly on sensitive ears.
Well, I see no reason why we should not discuss public
boards just as frankly as we discuss public employes. I get
pretty tired of hearing that the only solution to successful
board operation is to secure an executive who can "handle"
the board. That may be true enough at the moment. But
I, for one, am unwilling to let it go at that. Boards we
have and boards we are going to have. At present a good
many of them appear uncertain in the concept of their pur-
pose and function, and fumbling in their execution. Given
the whole development in the area of public welfare, good
intentions and "representative" status in the community are
not enough. If we are to go forward in the right direction
we need some good hard critical analj-sis of the how, why,
and what of citizen board function and performance.
Relief in the Sit-Down Strike
A SHARP reminder that "emergency" is the middle
name of public relief agencies came home to the
Genesee County, Mich. Welfare Relief Commis-
sion last month with the "sit-down strike" in Flint of
the United Automobile Workers. An increase in the relief
load from about 2500 families to more than 7800 within
five weeks, a community strained and tense under the con-
ditions of the strike, and the conflict between strikers and
non-strikers, put relief workers through an acid test of
strength and spirit.
When the strike broke in late December the question of
relief to the strikers was an immediate issue loaded with
potential controversy. "If you give relief the strike will
never be over." "We are all taxpayers and we object to
our money helping these ungrateful people," were typical
protests. A strong public sympathy for non-strikers,
"thrown out of work through no fault of their own," was
evident.
Then a new thought seemed to sweep the community.
It was hinted that the situation for the community and
for non-strikers undoubtedly would be much worse if there
were no relief ; there were whispers of possible violence if
relief were withheld, of public sympathy swinging over
toward the strikers if they had to solicit funds for sub-
sistence.
The County Emergency Welfare Relief Commission set-
tled the question with dispatch. On the agenda was "Atti-
tude Toward Strikers," and the commission's answer was:
"The matter is settled. We can't know who are strikers —
our business is relief." Other problems crowded to the fore,
and the strike-ridden town accepted the assumption that re-
lief workers, like doctors who care for those hurt in riots,
are professionals whose one job is to give relief where it
is needed.
In the relief offices, applicants packed the waiting rooms.
Strikers wearing union buttons jostled non-strikers, "but
always in good humor," said Ella Lee Cowgill, field rep-
resentative of the state relief commission in a letter to The
Survey. Of the staff's attitude she said:
We forget to look at buttons, in our desire to get to the
bottom of the relief need. . . . The organization has been so
nearly neutral that workers have no idea of the proportion of
strikers and non-strikers who receive relief.
From the day the strike was called, Flint relief workers
MARCH. 1937
looked for critical times ahead. They knew that many of
the families affected had had a working member for only
a few months, often after long stretches of unemployment.
They knew also that the much talked of bonuses and high
wages had been eaten up by old debts, and that only a few
pay days ago, many who now were strikers had celebrated
their first "real" Christmas in five or six years. Though
most of Santa Claus' selections would be called necessities,
inevitably they had cut into any possible savings.
In the first days of hope for an early strike settlement,
it seemed that the regular staff of the relief organization
might be able to "absorb" the extra load. But as soon as the
first peace parley failed the scene took on a different color.
On that day, the office swarmed with applicants for relief;
many could not be taken care of at all ; facilities were inade-
quate ; feelings were tense.
relief agency executives and staff have had long
apprenticeship to quick change and the great god emer-
gency. That day of somber news was the first and the last
that saw applicants turned away without attention. By
the following morning a new system was functioning which
sifted applicants at their point of first contact with the
relief office, so that each day everyone received some sort
of attention. Executives made quick estimates and appealed
to the state relief commission for the trained and seasoned
workers needed for sweeping expansion. Flint itself could
not supply the necessary workers though pressure was put
on the relief officials to take on local people identified with
one side or another of the controversy. In so tense a
situation, having workers come in from outside had definite
advantages.
Applications and intake surged up in waves, hitting but
never swamping one department after another. On Janu-
ary 5, with a normal case load, the Genesee County relief
office received twenty-nine applications, a fourth of them
from factory workers. On January 11, applications num-
bered eighty-two; and a few days later 247. Then, for
hectic days, they increased by daily dozens, until: "On
Monday, January 25, we reached 712, what we hope is our
peak. . . . Although the two factions between whom an-
tagonism runs high were crowded together in small quar-
ters," wrote Miss Cowgill, "the attitude of the applicants,
almost without exception, was very good. On Tuesday
morning . . . there was some difficulty, but since that time
there has been excellent cooperation and understanding.
69
Clients have seemed to realize that we are doing everything
in our power to take care of them. Order has been main-
tained without any officer of the law being present. . . .
Fortunately the organization is housed in a building that
is strong, fireproof and functionally adjustable. At no time
have applicants had to stand out of doors while waiting.
Applicants claiming an acute emergency were given relief
to tide them over until the home visitor could reach them.
Intake procedures were shortened and speeded up."
Meantime, behind the busy front doors and swarming
reception rooms, new and old staff showed that they could
"take it." "Despite the accelerated situation," reported a
visiting social worker, "there was a striking absence of the
lost motion and confusion which usually are transmitted to
clients in impatience and bewilderment."
THE surge of new cases hit the intake department, then
the investigating or visiting staff, then the auditors.
"Each department draws a long breath and jumps the wave
when it comes," reported Miss Cowgill, watching a
"hump" of about two thousand new cases pass through the
organization in the first days of the upsurge, "without a let-
down in standards or care in verifying necessary data."
Night work, restricted space, "almost every partition
moved in every department," were inconveniences taken
with good nature, enduring cooperation, and ready adjust-
ment to-emergent demands. Workers went long hours with-
out food or munched sandwiches at their desks. Presently
the WPA was persuaded to suspend its rules temporarily
and to set up and run a staff canteen, later taken over by
the county office itself. A rest room with cots where momen-
tary relaxation could be snatched was added. The hundred
or so workers hastily recruited from over the state "rapidly
absorbed new techniques, acquainted themselves with a new
city, and in spite of the pressure, met in the tiny canteen to
eat and laugh and exchange experiences. . . . They took to
the arduous work and long hours without complaint."
The bill for Genesee County's unemployment relief,
which mounted at the rate of about $10,000 a day during
the strike, was met out of the deficiency appropriation made
by the legislature to carry the state relief program for the
current fiscal year. For the last four years the policy of
financing relief in Michigan has been one of joint funding
ffom city, county and state. City and county do their best —
which amounted to 24.4 percent of total costs in 1936 —
and the state takes care of the remainder. The possible need
for another deficiency appropriation this year as a result of
the strike is still in the realm of future worries.
The attitude of the community in general toward the
relief efforts was cooperative. The executive secretary of
the Community Fund volunteered three workers from fund
agencies and two from his own staff. The newspapers
printed statistics, for the most part with small comment.
Wholesale and retail merchants, a little uneasy over large
credits rolling up, accepted the assurance of the State
Emergency Welfare Relief Commission that- their -bills
would be met. About the only conspicuous failure in the
community's general cooperation with the relief staff was
on the part of an active battalion of influenza germs. These,
it is reported, employed inexcusable obstructionist tactics.
The welfare committee of the United Automobile Work-
ers was in conference with relief administrators from the
first. "The committee seemed to find few points for com-
plaints and all seemed to be in good order," Miss Cowgill
observed on one of the first days of the strike. However, in
the subsequent days of strain, it was necessary to request of
the committee that it should not discuss problems of clients
within the building, that its watchers in reception rooms
should not suggest changes in visitors' decisions and that,
barring exceptional urgency, decisions on intake be accepted
by client and committee. On the question of preference, in
the lines of applicants, to families of "men occupying the
plants as strikers," it was decided that no special considera-
tion could go to the "sit-downers" as against others waiting
for attention. In general, a fine rapport between the relief
organization and the UAW welfare committee was re-
ported. The committee showed willingness to accept estab-
lished routines and procedures and the relief office to correct
mistakes.
The impact of the sensational jump in relief on the com-
munity as a whole probably was blunted by familiarity.
When seasonal unemployment in automobile factories has
been long a commonplace, sensational jumps in relief loads
are not exactly surprising. Though this was an extreme case,
involving the question, still controversial, of relief to strik-
ers, no particular adverse reaction has been observed.
Rather, reports a Survey correspondent, favorable com-
ments have been made on the way the relief agency met the
touch-and-go situation.
Miss Cowgill summarizes cogently: "For four years re-
lief in these industrial communities has been like sand
dunes: the wind of unemployment blows one way and they
are leveled down ; the wind of unemployment blows from
the other side and they are heaped up. The public is used
to rapid changes and adjusts to them."
""VjOW it is over," says the last installment of Miss
1^1 Cowgill's notes and jottings, made as the "hump"
was going through the relief office. "The facts emblazoned
in the mammoth head lines changed the relief picture over
night. On February 10 when the settlement negotiations
seemed deadlocked, applications numbered 656. On Feb-
ruary 11, when the agreement was signed, they dropped to
275; on February 12 to 175. All the way through the strike,
the applications for relief have been an accurate barometer
of the publicized success or failure of the negotiations.
When the prospect was hopeful, applications dropped off.
When it seemed hopeless, they increased.
"What have we learned out of this experience? For one
thing — not new to be sure — that social workers can keep
their heads and do their jobs under extremely tense and
trying conditions. They made blunders of course, some of
them amusing. For example, there was the girl from out of
town who sallied forth in a bright red tarn, quite unaware
that this was the insignia of the 'Emergency Brigade,"
women actively supporting the strikers. When doors were
slammed in her face, even when she was all but chased
down the street, she did not know what it was all about.
Not until she reported to the office and her supervisor saw
her hat did she know what had caused the trouble.
"Another thing we have learned is the value of a state-
wide organization which can throw its strength into a
difficult situation, establishing policies, recruiting personnel
and shouldering the bulk of the financial responsibility.
"Finally we have learned the value of the conference
method. The relief administrators and the welfare com-
mittee of the UAW spent long hours in conference, ironing
out difficulties and misunderstandings. Not once during the
crisis was there a resort to force — never a policeman in
the building. We are pretty proud of our social workers."
70
THE SURVEY
Social Workers Report and Forecast
By RUTH A. LERRIGO
WHILE havoc of strikes and floods, new problems
of social security and old ones of relief teemed on
home fronts, 300 social workers met in Washing-
ton in mid-February for the delegate conference of the
American Association of Social Workers. The national scene
was seething too, and delegates came prepared to give ear
and tongue to affairs at the capital — WPA and its future,
proposed government reorganization and a new federal
department of welfare, pros and cons of social security,
and the inadequacy of general relief funds.
Set apart on a "delegates only" floor, conferees got to-
gether around long green tables and gave conscientious
scrutiny to fat red folders of prepared wisdom. Veterans
who always have a ringer in the national welfare pie sat
elbow to elbow with hard-working practitioners more ac-
customed to jobs than talk, and newcomers with academic
finish still fresh and bright. Labor-conscious, young-
minded Chicagoans; fresh, realistic West Coasters and
midlanders; trouble-chastened Mississippi Valley dwellers;
facile, professional New Yorkers and Philadelphians; an
attentive gallery of invited guests; all were there. There
was little "cutting" of sessions or traditional conference
nonchalance as President Linton Swift led into the three-
day stretch of words-to-an-end.
With most of the field of public welfare under discus-
sion and nearly as many points of view as delegates, it
looked as though talk would outrun action. By the time
the last gavel had sounded, however, the members of the
conference had gone on record on major points. Indeed it
had taken only a few hours to demonstrate that, even at an
AASW meeting, the all-important question is, "Words to
what end ?" A carefully prepared report of the association's
Division on Government in Social Work was presented
by William Hodson of New York. Packed with contro-
versial subject matter, it carried forward and expanded the
association's previously expressed "stands."
The delegates backed its proposal for federal grants-in-
aid to states for a program of direct general family
relief and providing an underpinning to catch those in
need who are not now cared for under any program. They
endorsed the continuance of WPA, and recommended
further strengthening and development of federal employ-
ment services and vocational training and retraining pro-
grams for the unemployed. They approved the assistance
provisions of the Social Security Act and were emphatic in
advocating its extension to cover employes of non-profit
agencies and other groups now omitted. They agreed that
complete and irrevocable abolition of the old poor laws
was absolutely necessary. They likewise insisted on the merit
system in the selection of personnel "to save the entire relief
and public assistance programs from going down in the pork
barrel."
There is outstanding immediate need, the conference
agreed, for a thorough study and evaluation of the entire
relief and assistance problem by a non-partisan federal
commission. This was recommended to President Roosevelt
as appropriate "at this time of transition from emergency
to long time operations."
With social security and its train of debatable questions
on the mat for discussion, it was inevitable that categories
led all the rest. There were speakers full of unhappy proof
that, in practice, the categories of relief cause confusion
and duplication of effort; that gross injustices stand out
between their sharply delineated boundaries. Jostling opin-
ions with these speakers were strong believers, who con-
tended that categories are "saleable to and understandable
by" the public and offer a real chance for coverage of
need, if extended judiciously. Jane Hoey, speaking for the
Social Security Board, pointed out that it encourages in-
tegration through the local administrative unit; that dupli-
cation of effort can be avoided by flexibility "on the job"
and that the set-up offers real problems only in large
metropolitan centers. Some saw in a new "general"
category a possibility of undergirding the present assistance
program where and when it caves in.
The upshot of a ranging discussion was that the ques-
tion, "Is relief by categories to be preferred to generalized
relief?" remained on the list of points on which "the sense
of the meeting did not appear." A good safe "sense" was
reported, that "coordinated effort should be undertaken
by federal, state and local authorities to fill existing gaps
in relief programs," and that the Social Security Board
be supported "in its advocacy of state public welfare bills
for categorical and general relief."
BY the time the conference finished its consideration
of the Social Security Act it had recommended,
further:
A change in the provisions of the act so that workers earning
$1000 a year or less be exempted from contributing to old
age insurance.
Provision by the federal government for a voluntary annuity,
to be granted at cost up to a maximum of $500 a year and
available to any individual.
Extension of unemployment benefits, to be used in study and
vocational training for youths under eighteen who have never
been employed.
A committee to study a possible new assistance category, in-
validity, designed to give unemployment compensation to work-
ers suffering from protracted or chronic illness.
Uniform participation by the federal government in costs
of all types of assistance and administration on a fifty-fifty
basis.
The "stand" of the conference in relation to WPA was
expressed in the report of the Division on Government as
"opposed to the curtailment or demobilization of WPA
except as the total need is reduced by the recovery of
private industry." The gradual transformation of WPA
into a government employment program, as adequate as
possible, was advocated, such program to offer genuine
employment on useful projects, suited to the workers em-
ployed and divorced administratively from relief.
A skirmish between Harry Hopkins and the AASW
MARCH 1937
71
during the meeting was waged largely by the newspapers.
It began when newspaper men asked Mr. Hopkins to
comment on a recent AASW survey which indicated in-
adequate and haphazard relief in twenty-eight representa-
tive cities, since the withdrawal of federal funds for direct
relief. Mr. Hopkins had not read the statement. Reporters
described it. In a sweeping if brief reply which the news-
men drew from the WPA administrator, he was quoted as
charging that the AASW favored a return to "penny-
pinching, pantry-snooping direct relief." A morning paper
carried a cartoon representing WPA as a vanquished Caesar
under the dagger of an unidentifiable, portly Brutus tagged
American Association of Social Workers. The drawing car-
ried the inevitable title, "Et tu, Brute!" The affair was
given editorial attention, particularly in newspapers un-
friendly to Mr. Hopkins. The incident was recognized and
closed by Mr. Hodson, at the concluding session, as fo-
mented by reporters and the result of a misunderstanding
of fact.
Aside from the proposal that federal money be used for
"underpinning," only minor attention was given to prob-
lems of direct relief. There was discussion of the necessarily
competitive nature of even low standard relief with some
types of private employment, together with the ethical
question and the dangers involved in "subsidizing under-
paid industry by supplementation." A Philadelphia study
of 500 rejected applicants for relief was reported, which
showed that the difference in weekly income between fam-
ilies eligible for relief and those ineligible was only $3
to $4 in weekly income.
Dorothy Kahn left some listeners stimulated and others
floundering by developing a thesis which she had pre-
sented also to the International Conference of Social Work
in London. Believing that the concept of work should be
separated from maintenance, she held that "work is the
natural expression of the creative impulse in man and not
merely the result of the driving pangs of real or prospec-
tive hunger." If, then, maintenance were guaranteed as
a right, and work projects divorced from maintenance, she
contended, people would flock to suitable projects, where
work would hold prestige for its creative rather than its
subsistence value.
THE conference endorsed the proposed new federal
department of welfare, cautiously leaving room for
question as to its form and make-up. Many delegates were
disappointed that the subject received scant discussion. At
the closing session, a proposal was adopted that the sub-
ject be referred to the chapters for study and report at the
delegate meeting to be held in connection with the Na-
tional Conference of Social Work in Indianapolis, May 23
to 29.
Throughout the sessions, the delegate conference gave
much attention to holding a looking-glass to its own pro-
fessional qualities. "Why social workers? What are our
responsibilities? Our area of professional competence? Our
standards of evaluation?" When speculation turned on
the classic subject of social worker unpopularity, especially
• as evidenced in the "beatings" taken from legislators,
Grace Abbott exclaimed that she was tired of this in-
feriority complex.
"We sometimes show a surprising lack of humor," she
said. "We think we must be treated with the respect our
good intentions command. Now, I don't go sneaking around
thinking people don't like me because I'm a social worker.
If they don't like me it's for some other reasons!"
Hours of discussion were spent by the delegates in
baffling efforts to define and stake out the area of their
"professional competence." Gordon Hamilton, of New
York, suggested that the kernel of the matter is "evalua-
tion," which must be worked on before it is possible to
get anywhere in a discussion of competence. A consensus
of opinion vote favored studying evaluation, with all of its
ramifications, reaching out not only to competence but also
to employment practices, agency ratings, dismissal pro-
cedures, and personnel practices.
THE social worker's capacity and responsibility for
social action repeatedly was dragged into discussion,
but usually was left to flounder in questioning. Should
social action be individual or professional? Was it within
social work's "area of competence ?" How, as a numerically
small group, would social workers be most effective? Did
the members realize that social action cost money and must
be paid for? Some objected vigorously to expressions of
caution and questioning of social workers' competence,
protesting that leadership in social action was their tradi-
tional bent; that it was indeed a responsibility. Chiefly in
reports of local chapters' efforts to influence legislatures did
the subject come out of theory into practice.
The whole question of professional standard setting was
the subject of exhaustive debate. The conference dissected
membership standards for AASW, rating standards for
accredited training schools for social work and approved
social agencies, employment practices within social agen-
cies, as well as evaluation of workers on the job. A strong
left wing was convinced that AASW membership should
be liberalized to take in a more numerically significant
proportion of able practicing social workers. An equally
determined group felt that only strict academic standards
for membership, tied up with equally strict ratings for
training schools would serve the future of the profession.
Approved employment practices for social agencies, drawn
up in detail by a special study division, were adopted and
commended to local and national agencies for use in rating
"approved agencies." Among specifications were a thirty-
eight hour week and employe participation in policy
forming.
The conspicuous success of the conference was the
performance of the report committee, Joanna C. Colcord
of New York, chairman. It was the duty of this com-
mittee to present at the last session a complete summary
of all the meeting had said and done. With a firm hand
the committee pulled together consistent trains of thought
and trends of opinion from sessions which, in some cases,
had seemed diffuse and inconclusive. There had been times
when it appeared that tangible results from the meeting
would be lost in a swirl of words. But by adoption of
the report committee's summaries, the conference defined
its positions. Votes which had been recorded guardedly
as "sense of the meeting" were crystallized into definite
"stands."
Conferees went home convinced that, for three days,
they had lived intimately with the vital questions of today
and tomorrow. Now they saw in terms not only of home
fronts but of the whole country. The ruminative found
that they had a cud full of ideas to chew on.
72
THE SURVEY
High Water High Marks
Red Cross speaking . . .
JAMES L. FIESER, vice-chairman in charge of domestic operations.
To describe what happened in one city is to describe what
happened in all of them. In no place was there any real
evidence of confusion or of disorganization in efforts to
rescue those marooned by the flood and to see that all had
shelter, food and medical care.
We had hoped to be able to staff this disaster relief
operation almost entirely with experienced disaster workers
but as this proved impossible we requested from other agen-
cies the loan of case workers and others familiar with camp
organization and large scale feeding. We found that some
of the men trained in social work and experienced in set-
ting up and directing transient camps were best qualified
to help us in operating the refugee camps along the lower
Mississippi. State and city departments of public welfare
released to us some of their best men. In every instance
there was the greatest willingness to cooperate. Workers
were secured from all the larger cities as well as from
many rural communities.
In accordance with our usual procedure we took these
borrowed workers onto the Red Cross payroll at their
going rates of pay with living expenses and transportation
in addition. We now have the largest staff ever assembled
for a single disaster relief operation. There are 950 case
workers throughout the flood area, a number which will
probably be increased to some 1100 in addition to 1502
nurses and a considerable staff of accountants, building
advisers and other regular Red Cross personnel.
Cincinnati speaking . . .
c. M. BOOKMAN, executive vice-chairman, Community Chest.
THERE was no panic and little confusion. The city of half
a million, without lights or water, remained calm. The
whole community, as one man, came forward to help.
There was no shortage of food or clothing — both came by
the truckload from everywhere. In fact, as someone re-
marked, we had two floods, one of water and one of used
clothing. Clothing was of every description, from fur coats,
buffalo robes and nineteenth century underwear to boxes
of assorted fine laces — all for the flood sufferers. Help of
every kind was offered. A good maiden lady was "willing
to share a nice double bed with a flood refugee" ; a kind
woman in Iowa was "anxious to adopt half a dozen flood
orphans."
Professional social workers, more than 250 strong, mobil-
ized with one accord under the Red Cross. Emergency sta-
tions and canteens established, flooded and evacuated ; local
Red Cross organization strained to the breaking point to
meet a disaster previously unthought of; an army of unor-
ganized volunteers desperately anxious to be of service;
communities cut off from all contact ; rumors growing with
each repetition — such was the situation into which social
workers waded — literally — without thought of personal or
agency credit or possible honor.
The consolidation of emergency shelters and canteens
which sprang up like mushrooms all over the city was no
small undertaking. Establishing a regular procedure for
Service of Supply was in itself a job of mammoth propor-
tions. Scores of hastily installed telephones became the
nervous system of the emergency organization. A phone
ringing, a familiar voice recognized: "We've moved. Take
the address. We had 123 cases; now have 500. Need more
help quick. Please switch me to Canteen."
Another phone ringing, a tired and excited volunteer
speaking: "We need the National Guard." . . . "Why?"
. . . "Householder won't be rescued. Threatens to shoot us
up. We want guardsmen and guns." . . . "Is the water still
rising in his house?" . . . "No." . . . "Have we offered
help?" . . . "Yes." . . . "Think he'd drown before mov-
ing?" . . . "No." . . . "Are your boatmen tired and
hungry?" . . . "You're darned right they are." . . . "Well
call off your boatmen and feed "em." . . . "O.K. chief.
So long."
After the first shock of work stay-until-relieved assign-
ments were succeeded by three established eight-hour shifts
in all stations, with even a skeleton organization for dis-
trict supervision that was turned over to the National Red
Cross as it took hold.
Too much has been said about the paralyzing effect of
the flood on the entire community. For the flooded district,
one sixth of the city proper, "terrible" was indeed the
word. For the remainder of the city the situation was un-
comfortable but not alarming. The role of the citizen there
was that of a patient waiter with a great desire for service.
Days passed and anxious nights. Rescues were successful,
fire hazards were met, disease did not rear its ugly head —
in fact the rate of illness was below normal.
Now we face the long pull, the less dramatic rehabilita-
tion and reconstruction. A Rehabilitation Council has suc-
ceeded the Disaster Council. Federal, state and local forces
plan to meet rehabilitation in the same coordinated purpose-
ful way they met the actual flood.
My task was behind the scenes working with the Disaster
Council; days and nights of quick action, association with
valiant co-workers, and slowly an organization taking form
rationally and democratically. Disaster was averted, the
emergency is over, and our grandchildren will hear from
us endless stories — probably grossly exaggerated — of what
we did in the Great Flood of 1937.
Louisville speaking . . .
MARY B. STOTSENBURG, executive secretary, Community Chest.
EVERY social agency in the city turned its full staff and
facilities into the flood emergency. The hospitals and public
health nurses were under the direction of the city health
department; the Travelers Aid evacuated refugees by train
until the station was flooded ; Boy Scouts handled a num-
ber of boat stations as well as doing messenger service and
dozens of other things. During the first hectic days the
Community Chest office was the clearing house for volun-
teers; literally thousands of people called to offer service
in some form.
Case workers from all public and private agencies mobil-
ized under the Emergency Relief Department and were
placed as needed in the various shelters. They did every
imaginable kind of emergency service ranging from mid-
wifery to the care of household pets. Almost every family
arrived at the shelter with a dog, cat or canary, sometimes
MARCH 1937
73
all three, and their care was a real problem. The Emerg-
ency Relief Department operated on a twenty-four hour
basis and while an attempt was made to divide the workers
into shifts many of them were on the job continuously,
catching sleep as they could on the floor or on desks.
Probably 90 percent of the social workers were flood
refugees themselves, separated from their families, but in
spite of their personal anxieties they stuck to the job.
The flood situation changed from hour to hour and re-
lief organization and effort had to follow it. A shelter or-
ganized in the morning might have to be evacuated before
night. Thousands of refugees were moved to the "dry lands
area" over a pontoon bridge which they had to cross single
file at ten-foot intervals of space. The settlements and
Salvation Army centers in the downtown districts turned
themselves into shelters and feeding stations. At the height
of the flood a hundred pounds of fish were sent to the
Negro refugees housed at the Presbyterian Colored Mis-
sion. A fish-fry was organized and much enjoyed by one
and all. An old woman was heard thanking the Lord for
her nice new home.
The poise and calmness of everyone, including the
refugees, were impressive. Everyone took direction and fol-
lowed orders, the social workers along with the rest. The
people of the whole city worked as one body under the mayor
to handle the emergency as it developed from day to day.
Later on the Red Cross took responsibility for purchasing
supplies, supervising warehouses and GO on, and for estab-
lishing district offices to begin the rehabilitation of indi-
vidual families. The plan was worked out with the coopera-
tion of local agencies and the social workers are now
engaged in these districts under the Red Cross.
Frankfort speaking . . .
MARGARET WOLL, director field operations, public assistance divi-
sion, Kentucky Department of Public Welfare.
EVEN when the water was in sight from our windows we
could not believe that it would reach the office and the files
containing the thousands of records on old age assistance
in the state. But it did, and so fast that the files and
everything else had to be abandoned to the mercy of the
river. Our staff, our field workers and supervisors joined
local relief efforts wherever they found themselves, but as
soon as the peak of the flood had passed we mobilized them
all by radio in order to get February checks to the bene-
ficiaries with the least possible delay. Fortunately these
checks had been sent, when we saw crisis approaching, to
the various district offices, but thousands of the benefici-
aries have been flooded out of their homes, are refugees in
other counties, even other states, and the task of locating
them is enormous.
I wish you could have seen our state administrative
offices when the water went out. Steel filing cabinets and
everything else had burst and added their contents to the
mass of papers tossed around for days in the water. We
spread out the mess in every conceivable place and way and
put in coke stoves to supplement the furnace heat in dry-
ing things out. When dried out and the mud scraped off
it is remarkable how many of the records can be read,
though most of them will have to be done over. A good
many are already mildewing. Just try assembling a single
record from a mud-stained mass of thousands of broken
folders and files and you will know what a job we have
in rehabilitating our working system while work goes on.
One of our minor tragedies occurred in my own little
office where, with a coke stove going full blast, every inch
of space was covered with drying records. Real progress
was being made until the high temperature set off the over-
head automatic sprinkler system and a new flood descended.
Our state workers have returned now but we have few
facilities with which to work. Our entire stock of supplies
was ruined. However the morale is good and we are trying
to keep up the fighting spirit which is the order of the day
in Kentucky. We did nothing outstanding. Our workers
like everyone else took it as their jobs to fit in where they
could be of most service.
NORMAN BRADEN, director division of probation and parole, Ken-
tucky Department of Public Welfare.
Conditions in the Kentucky State Reformatory before
and during the evacuation of the prisoners made one of
the sensational stories of the flood. Mr. Braden's letter
is a chronological summary of critical events in which
he was a participant.
IT is seven o'clock the evening of Thursday, January 21
and the water is two feet deep in the cell block. Prisoners
have been moved to the catwalks of the high tiers of cells,
but the water is rising steadily, threatening every moment
to reach the power house and cut off heat and light. There
are 2900 convicts in the prison. At 11:15 all efforts to
save the power plant fail and the lights go off.
By nine o'clock Friday morning the current is so swift
that it is almost impossible to enter or leave the prison
except with power boats. By night the prisoners are giving
evidence of panic; ominous sounds are heard over the walls.
Every effort is being made to feed and keep them warm.
Truckloads of oil stoves and food are brought in from
Lexington and transferred to the prison by boat. Each
man is issued five blankets, but by Sunday they are fren-
ziedly tearing them up and throwing them into the water.
To get from one part of the prison to another means
wading through icy water, waist deep.
Saturday now. The water is creeping higher. The cell
blocks can no longer be entered either afoot or by boat.
Bars must be sawed from the windows to allow food to
be passed in. It is evident that the prisoners must be
evacuated.
Sunday, and we are bringing the prisoners out in boats.
Only power boats can hold their own against the current
and for every boat load of prisoners there must be two
boats for guards. The governor is wading around in hip
boots assisting in the removal.
Parole officers are sent to Lexington and surrounding
towns in the Bluegrass to arrange for the billeting of
prisoners as they come out. All jailers are notified to pre-
pare to receive convicts. The removal of prisoners by boats
is too slow. A ramp is being built over the wall so that
the men can be marched out under guard. The first load is
started for Lexington in army trucks. Prisoners after they
are out must be held under guard until billeting and trans-
portation arrangements are made.
All day Monday they keep coming, but by Tuesday
afternoon they are all out and under shelter. Not a man
was lost in the transfer. Considering the conditions within
the reformatory walls before and during the evacuation
there was little disturbance among the prisoners. In the
main they were quiet and orderly and many, both white
and colored, responded instantly to orders to assist in the
relief work. We were all pretty thankful when it was over.
74
THE SURVEY
Children Aren't Trash
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
It'T^HEY'RE trash, just
t trash, and it's nonsense
•*- to try to make any-
thing else of them. I've had the
whole tribe and I know."
The final shot of the depart-
ing caller interested Miss
Bailey, waiting to see the county
welfare director, and she opened
without preliminaries.
"The lady seemed wrought
up."
"And how!" Young Mr.
Baker was inelegant but em-
phatic. "That was the school
principal, and she's wrought up
every time anybody tries to do
anything for kids, except bawl
'em out and keep 'em after school. And a lot of good that's
ever done the Martins!"
"What's the matter with the Martins?"
"About everything. There's seven of 'em to start with,
running from twelve down and for at least four no visible
father, though Mrs. Martin says her husband drops in now
and then. Anyway there are the seven kids and no one can
prove anything. The family has scrabbled along somehow,
with Mrs. Martin grabbing off what relief she could get.
Possibly she has supplemented — after her own fashion —
which doesn't make it easier to help her children in a town
like this where we think that only the good get hungry."
"But what's the trouble now?"
"The trouble," Mr. Baker went on, "is that, by every
legal comma and rule, the Martin children are entitled to
assistance in their own home if it is suitable. We are trying
to make it suitable and the principal disapproves, says that
the mother should be 'turned out,' and the kids put in the
state home — though it's got a waiting list so-o-o long."
Miss Bailey felt a rash of questions coming on.
"What about the Martin home? What's it like?"
"Terrible — simply terrible. That is, it was. A four-room
shack down by the tracks, the kids huddled into three dirty
messy rooms, no regular meals or regular beds or regular
anything."
"I thought you said four rooms."
"Ye — es, Mrs. Martin had a 'parlor' with curtains and
pictures of movie kings — quite fixy in fact. The kids weren't
allowed in there." Mr. Baker looked faintly embarrassed.
"The children themselves — what are they like?"
"Pretty ornery, and why shouldn't they be? They've
been kicked around from the day they were born. It seems
to me that if this security stuff means anything it's got to
give children like that an average break."
"But how can they get a break with that mother?"
"First, let's ask why she's that kind of a mother. There's
plenty of answer to that too if you ask me. Anyway, it's
with her we have to start. She's fond of the kids in her own
way. She didn't treat 'em badly — she just didn't treat 'em
at all. It seemed to us that she had something to go on —
Miss Bailey Says . . .
Let's not be poor-law minded about as-
sistance to children. Take, for example —
Seven pretty deplorable youngsters whose mother,
deserted by her husband — if any — is more or less a
town scandal?
Three little girls, already near-problems, in a
home so unsuitable that there's no room for argu-
ment, and no other place to put them?
Two bright boys whose mother has made the
grade with occasional relief, and a little begging,
and who likes it that way?
just as the way she had fixed up
her 'parlor' hinted that she
might keep a decent house if she
had an incentive. She'd been
picking up grocery order relief
when and if she could find it,
but merely putting in a cash
allowance for the children didn't
seem like the whole answer.
That family needed a change of
scene. So do you know what
we've done?"
Miss Bailey wouldn't even
guess.
"We've moved the whole out-
fit over to the other side of the
county to a place where nobody
knows they're trash. We found
a five-room house and we allowed Mrs. Martin money for
repairs and furnishings, doing it her own way, and driving
her own bargains. She's been a wonder. Would you believe
it, every room has curtains and calendars, and dime store
vases, and there are regular beds and a dining table. She
gets $71 a month, cash money, for the children, and darn
it, I believe she's going to make good."
"But why does the school teacher object?"
"To the principle of using taxpayers' money for people
who are just trash whatever you do for 'em. But it seems
to me that children are children and that maybe, if we can
catch 'em young they won't have to be trash. Of course we
can't be too sure that Mrs. Martin won't slip from grace,
but now at least we can keep an eye on her and can protect
the children if it becomes necessary."
"And if it does, what then?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it — which
isn't saying we haven't come to it in other cases."
Miss Bailey registered interest and Mr. Baker went on.
< <A I ''HERE'S Mrs. Hopson, not quite feeble-minded but
A plainly 'teched,' whose husband deserted her and
none too soon. There are three not-so-bright little girls,
the oldest barely thirteen, already being whispered about.
No one suspects Mrs. Hopson of scarlet living but as a
mother she just isn't there. She abuses the children and the
home she keeps certainly is unsuitable for growing girls.
Only an act of God, giving that woman new mental equip-
ment, could make it different.
"But what can we do? We've gone into the possibility
of relatives and there aren't any. There's no placing-out
agency in this county; the state home-finding society is
taking only the most acute cases; the state home is so full
that it's bulging and it's a poor bet for these girls anyway.
Theoretically there are ways to break up this unsuitable
home, but in reality the cure would be worse than the dis-
ease. What we need are facilities for these cases that do
not fit into the pigeon hole marked 'assistance to children
in their homes.' It doesn't seem fair, does it? Children with
even passable mothers get the breaks; but if the mother or
MARCH 1937
75
near kin are wash-outs the children get no break at all,
though they're the ones who need it most."
"But what have you done about the little Hopson girls?"
Miss Bailey wanted the rest of the story.
"We're putting in assistance, and we're taking a beating
for it from the town. Maybe the town's right, I don't know.
It's a choice of assistance or direct relief and relief here is
practically starvation unless it is supplemented some way
or other — and our board isn't looking for any of that in
this Hopson case. Under assistance we can put in enough
to make existence possible, and can keep a hand on those
girls. The board isn't too optimistic but it thinks that the
girls are better off with us on the job than without us."
"Why is the town upset?" put in Miss Bailey.
«TJECAUSE it figures that we're pouring money in a
-L* rat-hole. The Hopsons are old town-poor and our
friends see them as hopeless — as perhaps they are, without a
good deal more careful treatment than we are equipped to
give. The town is willing that people like Mrs. Hopson
should have grocery orders when absolutely necessary but
cash money is different."
"But there may be a real point in that attitude." Miss
Bailey was talking to herself as much as to Mr. Baker.
"With funds so limited is it good social sense to spread
them to the widest interpretation of the law and hope that
by and large they'll accomplish something? Or should we
concentrate on those cases that are definitely hopeful?"
"If you're asking me," answered Mr. Baker, "I wouldn't
know. I only know that I don't want to be responsible for
consigning those little Hopson girls to township relief for
the next few years. Did you read Martha Gellhorn's, The
Trouble I've Seen? I'm not having any little Ruby on my
soul if I can help it. I'll take a chance on Mrs. Hopson's
dirt and disorder."
In the course of various visitations Miss Bailey discov-
ered that not all mothers whose children are eligible for
assistance are asking for it. Occasionally it is regarded by
doubting sisters as just another kind of relief, and if what
they are getting is at all adequate they prefer to hang on
to it. There was loud outcry in midwinter when orders
from Washington directed that all women with children
eligible for assistance should be dismissed from WPA proj-
ects. Even if allowances would equal their WPA wage
the mothers protested, "I have to apply, but please turn me
down so I can get my job back."
In many places public welfare officials have made no
effort to examine direct relief rolls to discover eligibles for
assistance to dependent children. The turnover on direct
relief is so large, they say, that to lift out this category
as of any one month would mean that they would "catch"
many cases not there the month before or the month after.
They question the wisdom of transferring to the long time
program people whose need of assistance seems to be only
temporary or occasional. "It is impossible, even if it were
desirable, to put on 'security' all the economic border-liners.
Relief should be a tool to help these people keep to the
way of independence; it should not be a first step to long,
term dependence — as it might be if we assume that being
on relief at any one time establishes the continuing need for
assistance to children. We should watch our step in this
whole area between temporary relief and assistance and not
let our policies 'freeze' until we know more about it."
Unpredictable human beings have a queer way. it
seems, of refusing to go into pigeon holes. There was
Mrs. Johns, for example, whose story Miss Bailey heard
from an harassed supervisor in a southern town. Mrs.
Johns had been a widow for years; running her home and
earning a living for herself and her two bright little boys
who did some odd-jobbing on their own account. Of late
years Mrs. Johns had to have occasional help from "the
relief," but always she managed to pull herself out again.
When she heard of "pensions for mothers" she promptly
presented herself. But after she understood that this wasn't
a bonus for being a mother, but was budgeted assistance to
the children, involving her own fairly constant presence in
the home, she was not interested. She did not propose to
change her way of life and the "security" held by a regular
allowance seemed less desirable and indeed less remunera-
tive than dependence on her own efforts.
No one quarreled with that stand until it was discovered
that the boys were engaging in a side line of begging.
"And what can you do about that," asked Miss Bailey.
"There isn't a thing we can do. We can't force Mrs.
Johns onto assistance, even if we were sure it would stop
the boys from begging. It is a problem for other community
agencies and influences, not for us. We are not a general
protective agency for all children of all low income mothers.
I wish people would get that straight. Every time one of
those Johns boys says, 'Please mister, give me a nickel. Me
mudder's sick,' somebody is scandalized because we don't
give 'that poor Johns woman' an allowance so that the
children won't have to beg."
Remembering how rapidly the whole pattern of helping
people out of trouble has changed in recent years. Miss
Bailey felt no surprise that the public, and indeed the social
workers themselves, are somewhat confused over the prin-
ciples and the practice of this newest addition to resources
for helping children. For new it is, to most of the country.
Although the principle of mothers' aid has been written
into most state laws for years, the practice, with various
honorable exceptions, has been so weak and spotty as to
leave the run-of-the-mill citizen quite unprepared for the
broad program now taking form. The philosophy of assist-
ance is not crystal clear to Mr. Citizen when its object is
some long familiar local unregenerate. Nor is it wholly
clear, even to social workers, why the seven children of
"deserted" Mrs. Martin should have $71 a month, while
the seven children of a WPA laborer must exist on his $42
wage, and seven children whose father neither has deserted
nor landed in WPA must live on township grocery orders.
"It's no wonder the poor old public is confused by these
beginnings of a system that isn't even licked into shape yet,"
ruminated Miss Bailey. "It's full of paradoxes and all
messed up with old prejudices and emergency notions. Time
is what we need, time to resolve the paradoxes and to dem-
onstrate that this isn't a new fancy form of relief but a
principle and a method. We've got to keep the principle
straight and the method fluid and not be too sensitive to
criticism from people who still are poor-law minded.
There's backing for this program in every community even
if it isn't always articulate. Plenty of people besides social
workers know that we can't afford to let children be trash."
This is the third of the new series of articles in which
the veteran "Miss Bailey" sums up the results of her first
hand observations and discussions with workers close in to
the actual operation of the social security services.
76
THE SURVEY
BEHAVIOR AS IT IS BEHAVED— V
The Andersons Reform
By ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE
£f ~f THINK it's a good idea, no mat-
1 ter what you say," Mrs. Ander-
A son insisted, "and I intend to
try it. It's foolish to say that we're too
old to change our ways. We're just too
lazy. Age is only in your mind anyhow.''
"Yeah, that's so," agreed Mr. Ander-
son without looking up from his news-
paper or stirring from his comfortable
chair in front of the fire.
"I've got a list right here. I've just
made it out," his wife went on. "I've
written down all the silly little habits
that I ought to change, and I'm going
to change them."
"Quite a long list, I presume," mur-
mured Mr. Anderson, still inattentive.
"No longer than yours would be. Now
look." Mrs. Anderson thrust a sheet of
note paper under his eyes. It was a for-
midable inventory and Mr. Anderson
took notice.
"I suppose this means that you're goinp
to change the furniture around again,"
he grumbled, poking at the fire.
"No. I'm going to change more im-
portant things than furniture. I'm going
to change my ways of doing things. I'm
in a rut. I don't know why I've stood
myself as long as I have — the way I
look, the way I act, the things I say,
the way I live. My weight for instance.
I know I'm too fat. And I drink too
much coffee. So I shall drink a cup of
hot water for breakfast, and cut out
lunch altogether."
"With prices going up, that's a good
idea, but don't expect me to join you,"
asserted Mr. Anderson stubbornly.
"Don't try to change my diet. Fat or
thin, I'll drink coffee, and I'll eat lunch."
"Eat what you like. I've given up your
waist line, but not mine. But anyhow,
you've got to learn to hang up your
overcoat and not leave it on a chair
in the hall. And I'm going to get a new
shoeshelf for the closet and you're to
put your shoes on it. It's all nonsense
your kicking them off in the middle of
the floor every night. I might break
my neck stumbling over them in the
dark."
"Yes. I suppose that would be a good
idea — I mean about the shoes." Mr.
Anderson looked none too happy.
"And what's more," Mrs. Anderson
warmed to her theme, "I'm sick of the
way I do my hair. I've done it this same
way for years. But now I'm going to
leave off hairnets. No one else wears "em
any more, and everybody says they add
years to your age. If other women get
along without 'em, I don't see why I
can't. Then there's earrings. They make
other people feel dressed up, but I've
always thought I'd feel silly in 'em. But
that's just because I'm not used to them.
I got some cheap ones to try."
In front of the mirror Mrs. Anderson
manipulated some improbable pearls and
made them fast to the lobes of her ears.
They dangled giddily on both sides of a
face ornamented otherwise with an ex-
pression so far from giddy and so full
of stern resolve, that even to herself
the result was disconcerting.
"I guess to get the earring habit,
you'll have to cultivate an earring
smile," observed her husband mildly.
"Maybe you can't acquire it as easily
as you can buy jewelry." She saw to her
dismay that he was right. Her face gazed
back from the mirror with the startled
look of a staid old horse who finds his
ears bedecked with daisies.
"I'm not dressed for them," she ex-
plained. "They'll look all right when I
am."
"It's a funny thing," ruminated Mr.
Anderson. "You feel about earrings the
way I do about golf trousers. I've tried
to wear them to please you. But they've
got me licked. I feel like a fool in 'em,
and they make me look like one."
"I'm sure you'd look nice in them if
you'd give them a chance." Mrs. Ander-
son held to her principle, though at this
point without much conviction. She re-
membered her insistence that her husband
venture into golf trousers, and how
shamefaced he was in them, like a little
boy dressed for a costume party. Probably
it was too late now for him ever to look
like an outdoor man. She sighed as she
laid the pearl pendants back in the box;
but she was not ready to yield the prin-
ciple.
"Now look at the Oswalds next door.
They can get away with any style of
clothes. But what they can't do is to
save their money. It's pathetic how they
try."
"Try, do they?" growled Mr. Ander-
son, who didn't like them.
"Yes, I really believe they do. But
she was brought up rich, with extrava-
gant habits, and she doesn't seem able to
change. Everything she buys for the baby
is the most expensive there is, even things
he'll outgrow in a few months — like
that baby coach and bath outfit. Would
it hurt that baby to be wheeled in a
$15 buggy, and bathed in a basin, when
they're as hard up as they say they are?
She always claims it doesn't pay to buy
cheap things."
"It would pay Oswald to live within
his income. He told me once that when
THE FORCE OF INDIVIDUAL HABIT
WHY did not the Andersons change their ways? Was it because they
did not really want to? Or did not want to hard enough? Or wanted
to and at the same time did not want top Is this possible?
Can you name three habits of your own which you have succeeded in
changing? How did you do it? Three you tried unsuccessfully to change?
What was different in the two situations?
Do you consider that the Andersons had average, or less than average
ability to change? How "average" is your own ability compared with theirs?
Why not make an experiment with yourself, trying for two weeks to
change two of your settled habits, noting your progress and the reasons for
your success or failure?
And afterward ask yourself: did the result depend upon the length of
time you had the habit? Your pleasure in it? The force of your desire to
change? Or were the reasons more obscure or complicated, or beyond control?
Does the ability to change individual habits have any bearing on delin-
quency?
SUGGESTED READING:
WILLIAM JAMES: PSYCHOLOGY. Chapter 4. Habit.
KNIGHT DUNLAP: HABITS; THEIR MAKING AND UNMAKING.
EDWARD THORNDIKE: ADULT LEARNING.
WILLIAM SEABROOK: ASYLUM.
MARCH 1937
77
they first got sunk in debt he could
hardly sleep for worrying. But now that
he sees his wife can't change, he's trying
to change himself and not let the bills
bother him. He's coming along fine, I'll
say. I'll never see that $25 I lent him
six months ago. He can try some one else
next time. I see they're turning in their
old car."
"Yes. She told me that it wouldn't pay
them to get new tires. Which means that
they don't intend to pay us."
"There's nothing you can do with that
kind of woman but drown her," snapped
Mr. Anderson savagely. "She's a spoiled
girl, as spoiled as rancid butter, and
about as useful."
"I think she tries to change." Mrs.
Anderson was trying to be fair. "But
she forgets herself ; slips back to her old
spending habits, just the way Mr. Os-
wald makes mistakes in his English once
in a while, even though he went to col-
lege. I heard that his parents were pret-
ty ignorant, and apparently no amount of
education keeps him from a few lapses
when he isn't thinking."
"I suppose that's why I always hang
the hammer on a nail instead of putting
it in the tool box. My mother always
made a great point of that — we boys al-
ways must hang the hammer on a special
nail in the woodshed, and it's just second
nature to me to look around for a nail."
"You're such a creature of habit."
Mrs. Anderson shook a discouraged head.
"It's incredible how hard you find it to
change. The doctor has told you again
and again that you would breathe easier
if you would sleep on two pillows in-
stead of one. Yet night after night, you
wheeze away with both pillows on the
floor. Now there's no sense to that. It's
just plain stupid not to make things
easier for yourself. I should think you'd
at least try."
"I do try," protested her husband, pok-
ing at the fire, "but my old ways are just
too strong for me. How about yourself?
The same doctor told you not to eat be-
tween meals. But I catch you at it every
day of your life."
"I know you do. And come to think of
it," she added suddenly, "there's nothing
I'd like so much this minute as a cheese
sandwich with a cup of coffee. I got some
fresh rye bread and roquefort today."
"If you'll let me throw my coat on the
chair, my pillows on the floor, and my
shoes wherever they fall, I'll go out and
have a snack with you." Mr. Anderson
started up hopefully, as if he knew what
she would do.
The sheet of note paper, with the list
of resolutions so bravely made, fluttered
from Mrs. Anderson's lap to the hearth
as she followed her husband into the
kitchen. Protesting as she went, never-
theless she went, and presently produced
portly sandwiches and hot strong coffee.
Munching comfortably together over the
kitchen table, Mr. Anderson soothed her.
"Maybe we ought to change our ways.
You're probably right, but our habits
have got us down. We're like a couple
of old dogs, used to our platter under the
sink and our beds behind the stove."
"Oh, what an awful picture," his wife
protested, putting down her sandwich.
"It's true just the same," he insisted.
"This is the way we do things, and it's
too much trouble to do 'em differently.
You let me be disorderly, and I'll let you
get fat. Why suffer at our age?"
His wife sighed again. But she poured
him another cup of coffee, and spread her-
self another sandwich.
Meantime in the deserted living room
the sheet of note paper on the hearth be-
gan to char and blacken. Presently it
burst into a flame. A puff of smoke and a
whiff of grey ashes went up the chimney.
This is the fifth in a series of sketches
described by the author in her introduc-
tion as "life occurrences without labels."
[See THE SURVEY, November 1936, page
333.] The sixth, The Pashkas Eat Break-
fast, will appear in April. The sketches
are from an unpublished book. Selections
for SURVEY publication, their order and
arrangement are by the editors.
You're spoiling all our citizens,
They've changed to lazy louts,
They wouldn't take a private job
If driven there with clouts.
And John who never worked a day
In all his lazy life,
Is sitting around the kitchen stove,
While you feed his kids and wife.
Why don't you take relief away,
And make him stop his shirking?
I don't know where there's jobs to get,
But know he should be working.
And Pete gets more than he should have,
I know that's gospel truth,
'Cause someone told the man next door,
Who told to Mrs. Booth.
And Mrs. Booth told Mrs. Jones,
Who passed it right on down.
Now can you doubt the truth of this,
When it's known all over town?
Y ES, "it's known all over town," as I
suppose it is "known" in the same
way in every other town — only with us
it is a county of some 19,000 people, all
of whom apparently, except the Johns
and Petes themselves, know some story
of relief chiseling as "gospel truth." We
in the relief administration know better
of course. We know how one slacker can
TSH! TSH!! TSH!!!
By A. D. WINSLOW
Relief Administrator,
Mason County, Michigan
multiply as the story rolls along; how
one incident inaccurately observed per-
haps, or misunderstood, can be blown
up into a general damning "They don't
want to work."
But we had no proof sufficiently simple
and direct to carry conviction to people
who never doubt anything "when it's
known all over town."
Then out of a clear sky came the vis-
ual evidence. Owing to a seasonal rush
of work our eight visitors were obliged
to skip one of their periodic contacts
with their cases, customarily made once a
month. These contacts of course served
to check on changed conditions and the
need for continuing relief. To our grati-
fication the clients, when the visitors did
not appear, proceeded to do their own
checking. The mail was salted with re-
turned orders, uncashed, and with letters
saying in effect, "We have a job now and
can go off relief."
I don't know what moved me to begin
tacking these communications on my
office wall, but I did, and the result was
what I call my True American Display.
It consists of forty-two orders for grocer-
ies and the like returned voluntarily be-
cause, on account of changed circum-
stances, they were no longer required;
thirty-two letters expressing appreciation
for relief and notifying us that, due to
reemployment, it need not be continued,
and two uncashed checks for one day's
work each, returned by the recipients.
The True American Display attracted
much attention, the local newspaper
commenting on it as follows:
"On a wall in the office of A. D.
Winslow, SERA administrator, is an ex-
hibit worth noting. It is made up of a
number of relief orders which have been
returned by the recipients. . . . Inasmuch
as these individuals had just obtained
new jobs, no one would have known the
difference had they cashed the orders
sent them. But that is beside the point.
These persons had no desire to capitalize
on a situation which made detection un-
likely. They were not interested in any
act even remotely bordering on chisel-
ing. . . ."
Thus, with simple visual evidence wo
started a new story going and ourselves
gave the challenge:
"Now can you doubt the truth of this
When it's known all over town?"
78
THE SURVEY
The Common Welfare
The Fight to Ratify
THREE more states — Nevada, New Mexico and Kan-
sas— ratified the child labor amendment in February,
and at this writing (February 25) the fight centers in New
York. The state Senate passed the ratification resolution
with a comfortable majority. At a six-hour hearing before
the Assembly Judiciary Committee, the opposition was led
by Bishop Edmund F. Gibbons, who spoke on behalf .of
seven other Catholic bishops in New York, and read a
statement from Cardinal Hayes. Though the Church has
persistently opposed the amendment as "an unwarranted
invasion of parental rights," it has not hitherto taken so
forthright a stand. [See Survey Graphic, January 1937,
page 10.] At the hearing friends of the amendment were
much more numerous than foes. They included Mayor
La Guardia of New York City, a Catholic Citizens Com-
mittee for Ratification, representatives of organized labor,
and some six hundred members of the Joint Committee for
Ratification. But Bishop Gibbons' statement cost the
amendment support among Democratic assemblymen, a
majority of whom are Catholics, and this caused the Re-
publicans to waver. At this writing the issue is in grave
doubt, with the possibility that Governor Lehman, who
favors ratification, will make a radio appeal to the voters.
Among newspaper publishers, who as a group oppose
ratification, some are carrying their opposition to the point
of suppressing news. Thus the New York Herald Tribune
failed to publish the latest poll of the American Institute
of Public Opinion which it regularly carries. This sampling
of public opinion, released the day before the hearing,
showed that 83 percent of the voters of New York State
favor ratification, as compared with 63 percent in May
1936. For the nation, the poll showed 76 percent in favor,
as against 61 percent nine months ago.
Two other states, Texas and North Carolina, acted on
the amendment in February, both rejecting it.
Flood Relief— Third Stage
THE drama of flood relief passed when the runaway
Ohio retreated to its banks and the flood waters rolled
down the Mississippi inside the levees. For a week the flight
from the flood, the rescue, shelter and feeding of its vic-
tims had all the high excitement of combat. That was the
first stage of flood relief. The second stage — to survey the
ruins, to dig out the mud, to hasten the demobilization of
the concentration centers with their heavy health hazards
— was less exciting but it was still emergency, still a fight.
Now comes the third stage, the restoration of resource-
less flood victims to normal life. This stage is not dramatic.
It has none of the thrill of rescue, the emotion of mass
emergency. It must be done family by family, each accord-
ing to its need — a long slow business, often profoundly
discouraging.
It is at this stage of disaster — be it flood, fire or what
not — that the Red Cross makes its most distinctive contri-
bution. That is not to belittle its service in the earlier
stages, but only to say that after the agencies of rescue and
emergency have finished their tasks the Red Cross is just
getting into its stride. Citizens of any community anywhere
will rise to such conditions as confronted Cincinnati and
Louisville and will shelter and care for the homeless. But
take Memphis, not itself hit by the flood but a concentration
point for refugees from Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee,
even from parts of Kentucky and Missouri. Memphis folk
rose manfully to the emergency, but it is the Red Cross
that will follow these refugees back to the scattered farms
and villages, will repair and rebuild the damaged houses,
will provide seed for the next planting and, with a lift here
and a boost there, will help the families back to their feet.
Two services are necessary in such major disasters as
the Ohio flood : the quick effective service of emergency
and the steady continuing service of rehabilitation. Thanks
to the spirit of the American people we have them both.
The Labor Scene
Steel — Labor negotiation, not labor conflict, is the headline
news as this issue goes to press. Myron C. Taylor, president
of U.S. Steel, and John L. Lewis, head of the Committee
for Industrial Organization, have for months been quietly
conferring on their common problems. Benjamin C. Fairless,
head of one of the chief subsidiaries of U.S. Steel, and Philip
Murray, one of Lewis' chief lieutenants, have negotiated the
first formal agreement between a "big steel unit" and an in-
dependent labor union. It is noteworthy that this agreement,
which removes the threat of a major steel strike, not only
accepts the principle of collective 'bargaining, but also the
forty-hour week. Here is "social evolution" at work, for
twenty-five years ago the industry held that steel could be
made only if its employes worked the twelve-hour day in the
steel mills.
Autos — Representatives of General Motors and the
United Automobile Workers of America, continuing their
conferences, had (as this went to press) reached tentative
agreements on seniority, methods of pay and production
speed. Still to be ironed out were specific cases in which dis-
crimination is alleged by the union, minimum wages, and
the thirty-hour week. The basic point won by the union
in the costly "sit down" was the opportunity to organize
the workers in General Motors plants by gaining effective
status as a bargaining agency. While the strike settlement
recognizes the union as such only for its own members,
William S. Knudsen, General Motors vice-president, had
earlier stated that "any advantages accorded [in negotia-
tions] to one group would be accorded to all, conditions
being the same." In other words, if an agreement on wages,
hours, and working conditions were to be made effective
for union employes and not for non-unionists, either the
working force would be disrupted, or the non-unionists
would be driven into the union. . . . Chrysler Corporation
and the union are having their sit-down around the confer-
ence table in early March. The negotiations started with
stream-lined courtesy on both sides. The union claims a
majority of the 77,000 Chrysler employes as members.
MARCH 1937
79
Men's Clothing — Under a new three-year agreement for
the men's garment industry approved last month by repre-
sentatives of the union and a committee of clothing manu-
facturers representing 85 percent of the industry, 135,000
members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of Amer-
ica will receive a wage increase of 12 percent, a total of
$30 million annually. The contract, effective May 15,
is the first negotiated nationally by the Amalgamated.
Goal — On March 31, the present agreement between the
United Mine Workers and the operators in the Appala-
chian fields will expire. In mid-February representatives of
each side met in New York to negotiate a new agreement.
The workers ask a basic wage of $6 a day, with two hun-
dred days work a year guaranteed, a thirty-hour week,
vacations with pay, and some control over the effects of
mechanization. Operators declare these demands "utterly
impossible," but both sides look to eventual agreement.
Acts of Friendliness
HOSPITES is the name given to a group organized for
mutual helpfulness between social workers in different
nations. The term connotes hospitality toward strangers,
and in an international sense refers to acts of friendliness
toward visitors from another country. In normal times,
Hospites would be concerned with receiving visiting social
workers and aiding them in making contacts within their
field. But in times of political upheaval like the present, a
hospitable act toward a fellow social worker may extend
across the seas. It may be a service, large or small, as an
expression of good will in time of need or it sometimes may
be a means of salvaging the results of past experience and
readjusting the individual to a new environment. Hospites
as a group is concerned with these individual needs in the
spirit of personal friendliness between fellow workers in
the same profession, and its work involves no political judg-
ment nor partisan attitude.
Organized in September 1933, Hospites has raised and
disbursed over $7000 from American social workers and
their friends, mostly for the relief of displaced or refugee
social workers who are still in Europe. Cooperating with
other groups, it has assisted some twenty German social
workers of proved ability to reach the United States and
establish themselves here, giving advice in regard to emi-
gration, procuring affidavits of maintenance and/or employ-
ment to support their requests for visas, interesting settle-
ment houses to furnish temporary maintenance, schools of
social work to furnish scholarships, and so on. Less than
$100 has been spent by Hospites, however, in connection
with this particular group.
New Housing Bill
THE long anticipated federal housing bill has reached
Congress, introduced in the senate by Senator Robert
F. Wagner of New York; in the house by Representative
Henry B. Steagall of Alabama. In briefest summary the
bill would establish a permanent U.S. Housing Authority;
would authorize a series of bond issues totaling a billion
dollars over a four-year period for loans to local housing
authorities for low rent projects and would provide for
the payment of annual contributions over a long period of
years by the federal to the local agency in order to enable
the latter to keep the rents in each project within the reach
of low income families. This last provision, following in
general the British system, is hailed by housing experts, as
the most advanced feature of the bill.
In practice the system would operate, it is said, some-
thing like this: after approval by the U.S. Housing Au-
thority of an application for a loan by a state or municipal
housing authority two agreements would be entered into.
One would bind the local authority to repay the loan with
interest at not less than the going federal rate over a
given period not exceeding sixty years; the other would
bind the federal authority to pay the agreed-on contribution
to each local project for a specified period of years as long
as it fulfilled specifications, the most important of which is
that all tenants be from low income groups unable to pay
commercial rentals.
The contribution feature of the bill calls for an initial
appropriation of $50 million to cover the annual contribu-
tions for the first four years after which such contributions
would be appropriated annually. Other features of the
bill would permit limited loans to limited dividend corpo-
rations and would permit the federal agency itself to con-
struct a few demonstration projects.
Sponsors of the bill calculate that under its procedure
50,000 families can be rehoused in 1938; 75,000 in 1939;
100,000 in 1940 and 150,000 in 1941.
Suggestible Cannibal
ANNIBALS do not often eat one of their own
village ; they kill and eat members of hostile
tribes, having a liking for babies.
"But the natives give up cannibalism readily. Possibly
they have been cannibals largely through want of animal
food. ... In some parts the people have never been
cannibals and they look down on those who are. This
shames the cannibal. We have been greatly helped in put-
ting down cannibalism by encouraging this attitude, and
so attempting to create public opinion." — SIR HUBERT
MURRAY, lieutenant governor of Papua, in Anti-Slavery
Reporter and Aborigines Friend.
Velocity Dollars
"T CERTAINLY won't have any trouble spending the
A money," said C. C. Fleming, unemployed orchard
worker, as he pocketed the 200 marked one dollar bills with
which the Townsend Club of Chelan, Wash, undertook to
"test" the Townsend Old Age Revolving Pension Plan.
Local merchants agreed to put two cents in the "kitty"
every time one of the bills appeared in a transaction. At the
end of the week the somewhat bemused orchard worker
had $34.12 left, but he had given a party to his relatives,
had bought an overcoat and a haircut for himself, clothes,
shoes and a permanent wave for his wife, and had paid
"something" to various creditors. The "kitty" added up
to $18.51, but Townsendites in Chelan were sure that
before the month was over the tax on the "velocity dollars"
would equal the original $200. If it didn't, they said, it
would be because certain "rebel Townsendites" were sabo-
taging the test by hoarding the tagged bills, thus withdraw-
ing them from the rapid circulation necessary to the success
of the scheme.
Anyway there was abundant proof that Mr. Fleming
had no trouble spending the money.
80
THE SURVEY
The Social Front
Public Assistance
HPHE Bureau of Public Assistance, So-
Icial Security Board, has published a
tabulation, state by state, of the charac-
teristics of state plans, approved as of
November 2, 1936, for old age assistance
aid to the blind and assistance to de-
pendent children. The information, read-
ily comparable, shows the wide range of
administrative procedure throughout the
country within the basic framework re-
quired by the provisions cf the Social
Security Act.
Alabama Children— An analysis of
health and housing conditions in a good
sized sample of Alabama families receiv-
ing assistance for dependent children, re-
vealed disquieting facts. Some 835 chil-
dren out of 1244 reported were suffering
from definitely diagnosed physical dis-
ease or defect. Housing ranged from
"good condition," reported for fifteen
families, down the grade to "any make-
shift affajr such as a tent or hovel," re-
ported for seventeen families. The largest
group, 272, were living in houses "need-
ing structural repairs to roof, foundation
and walls."
Commenting on the health conditions
among these families the State Depart-
ment of Public Welfare, in its monthly
bulletin, says: "It is clear that some pub-
lic provision for adequate medical care
must be made for those families living on
very low income levels. The inadequacy
of the present assistance grants has pro-
longed what amounts to cruel conditions
among twenty thousand children in the
state. The presence of diagnosed tuber-
culosis, venereal disease, hookworm, car-
diac conditions and nutritional diseases
is a menace to the safety of whole com-
munities. . . . There is no more serious
child welfare problem in Alabama today
than child health in dependent family
groups. To allow such conditions to con-
tinue is to create a vicious circle of sick
generations."
Headache in Missouri — The large
initial bite which Missouri took at old
age assistance is proving formidable to
swallow. Of the hundred thousand or so
persons who applied — about two thirds
of the population over seventy — 58,747
were accepted. "Missouri," says the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, "has more old age
pensioners than California or Pennsyl-
vania, though Pennsylvania's total popu-
lation is almost three times that of Mis-
souri and California's nearly twice as
large." What has happened, comments
the same paper editorially, "is that Mis-
souri politicians have transformed a fine-
MARCH 1937
ly humanitarian movement into an ugly-
racket. And the most unfortunate result
is that the really deserving old people
are not getting the $30 a month which
the law calls for, but about $11 a month
... to keep body and soul together."
Governor Stark is asking the legis-
lature for $18,900,000 for the state's
share of old age assistance for the com-
ing biennium. The matching federal
grant would bring the funds for this one
form of assistance to $37,800,000, only
$10 million less than the state's entire
expenditure out of general revenue in
the last two years. At the same time the
governor recommends only $6,100,000 for
direct relief, a sum which, says the St.
Louis Relief Administration, is required
for the acute needs of St. Louis alone.
Too Much Work— With the rapid
spread of various forms of public assist-
ance, many agencies are finding it neces-
sary to limit their service in verifying
information on specific cases for out-of-
state inquirers. In Idaho, where an in-
quiry may involve a fifty or hundred mile
trip into the country, the Cooperative Re-
lief Agency will not undertake to execute
"Responsibility of Relative" forms, and
urges out-of-state agencies to direct re-
quests for verification of births, deaths,
divorces and so on, to county clerks. The
Old Age Division of the New York City
Department of Public Welfare no longer
will undertake to witness the filling out
of affidavit forms for out-of-state cases,
though it will endeavor to make contact
with relatives on certain aspects of their
attitude to aged applicants for assistance
elsewhere and, for the present, will for-
"I Like It"
By RAY H. EVERETT
To brief a mass of news and views
That we, ourselves, would pick and choose —
To summarize the lost and won
For those who oft must read and run —
To deal with all our social ills
In short and pithy mental pills —
To furnish items nicely drest
That take but moments to digest —
Though not intended to endure,
Such writing is no sinecure.
(So most of us pen brochures thick
When paragraphs would do the trick.)
Hence, when the Midmonth Survey lands
And settles in my outstretched hands,
With eager eyes and avid grunt
I head me for "The Social Front."
ward to the proper offices requests on
vital statistics or naturalization. The
Massachusetts Department of Public
Welfare is declining, regretfully, to make
inquiries when assistance from relatives
is the only service requested and is ad-
vising agencies to direct such inquiries to
the persons involved.
WPA
the unemployed are in terms
of their regular occupations, when
they had any, is the subject of exhaustive
classification and analysis in the 110-page
report, Usual Occupations of Workers
Eligible for Works Program Employment
in the United States, prepared under the
direction of Corrington Gill, assistant
administrator of WPA. The material
was gathered more than a year ago to
serve as a basic direction-finder for the
whole federal works program. It is re-
leased at this time apparently to show
that "our operations have been guided
by definite facts."
The count shows a grand total of
6,402,000 workers eligible for WPA jobs
at the beginning of 1936, "though this
total does not mean that we could have
employed that number even if we had
had the money." More than a third of
the total were women of whom less than
half were heads of families. Nearly four-
fifths of the men were heads of families.
More than 840,000 of the total had no
work experience.
All these eligible workers were card-
indexed in their respective communities
according to sex, family situation, edu-
cation, usual and alternate occupation
and "work qualified to do under our pro-
gram, as well as according to private
employment history and WPA work his-
tory, if any.
The present summary classifies the
workers according to 160 occupations.
For example, there were 618,000 per-
sons experienced only in domestic and
personal service work, 110,000 retail
store sales clerks, 240,000 office workers,
960,000 unskilled laborers, 435,000 farm
laborers and so on through the 160 job
categories. There was one female black-
smith and seventeen male takers-in-of-
washing by the day were found.
Take Your Choice— Acting on an
opinion by the Michigan state attorney
general, the relief administrator in Grand
Rapids, W. E. Kirchgessner, has ruled,
according to newspaper reports, that
WPA workers, (except for non-relief
employes) are receiving "public relief and
support within the meaning of the gen-
eral poor laws," and that their WPA
81
employment does not establish legal resi-
dence in any county.
On the contrary the Pennsylvania state
attorney general's office wrote Karl de
Schweinitz, executive director of the
SERB, that: "We are of the opinion and
you are therefore advised that the per-
sons engaged in the performance of
work under such agencies as the PWA,
WPA and CCC are not public charges,
but are engaged in employment and may
therefore acquire a settlement in the
county in which they are engaged. . . ."
Safety — During the first sixteen month.!,
of WPA, 550 deaths and 65,000 injuries
to workers occurred. This was only a
fraction of the normal expectancy, which
was estimated in advance by the U.S.
Department of Labor at a probable 2700
fatalities and 454,000 lost time injuries
for the first twelve months of the
program.
Relief
HP HE density of the relief population
in New York's Harlem is a matter
of grave concern to relief officials. In one
Harlem district of the ERB there are
19,500 home relief cases per square mile;
in another 12,500. A comparably con-
gested east side district has 8000 cases
per square mile ; a crowded Brooklyn
district, 3000. There are some 35,000 em-
ployable Negroes on home relief in New
York in practically all occupational class-
ifications except trained sleep-in domestics
of which there are none.
During the past seven months the
cases closed in the Harlem districts be-
cause of employment represented only
2.67 percent of the case load, while in
other districts they represented 4.96 per-
cent. In other words "the Negro has
had about one half of a bad chance of
getting a job."
Up and Down — A sharp mid-winter
rise in relief rolls is reported from Penn-
sylvania where the number of cases in-
creased by 24,246 in ten weeks ending
in early February. In a single February
week 6278 cases were opened and 3747
closed. Losing or getting WPA jobs was
responsible for about a third of the turn-
over. . . . Chicago's relief rolls increased
by 20.3 percent during the last three
months of 1936.
Boston reports that the 1936 relief ex-
penditures of its Department of Public
Welfare were about a million dollars
under- those of 1935, a drop attributed
largely to increased WPA spending.
Soldier's relief has dropped steadily in
Boston over the last four years. Expen-
ditures for direct relief by private social
agencies fell from $582,000 in 1935 to
$554,000 in 1936.
Mexican Migrants — Agencies in many
parts of the country are perplexed by
the relief problems raised by Mexican
J FMAM J J ASOND.J FMAM J J ASOND.J /MAM J J ASONO.J FMAM J JASOND.JFMAI
This is not a player piano roll but a visualization of how eighty-two families of La
Crosse County, Wis., were on relief, off, and on again between January 1932 and
May 31, 1936. Only three of the cases, all drawn at random from the active case file,
were on relief continuously for the whole period; twenty-one others were on without
a break for periods ranging from two and a half years to a month. All others had
from one to five breaks in their relief history. In the state as a whole, turnover was so
high last year that although, from January to November, the monthly case average was
57,900, a total of 139,400 different cases were on the rolls at one time or another.
migratory laborers, who suffer from be-
ing shunted from county to county, until
finally they reach larger centers, where
they have a chance of receiving care.
In Colorado, Mexican migrant families
are used to harvest the sugar beet crop.
Last year, after the harvest, approximate-
ly 600 such families with insufficient sav-
ings for the winter, found their way to
Denver. Just as many are expected to
arrive this year. In an effort to forestall
such a drain on vanished relief funds the
Denver Bureau of Public Welfare is at-
tempting to stabilize these workers in the
communities where their labor is essen-
tial during a part of the year.
"Obviously," reasons the bureau,
''Denver is not a beet-working community,
and has no special responsibility toward
this type of labor," adding, in substance,
that when and if relief funds from any
source become available they can just as
easily be administered to these families in
the beet harvesting localities as elsewhere,
and that migrations to Denver are costly,
unsettling to family life, education and
citizenship. The bureau therefore sent a
letter to each beet-working family, sug-
gesting that it remain in the community
where it has had employment and "ad-
vising it of the critical relief situation and
of the necessity of conserving earnings. '
82
THE SURVEY
In St. Paul, Minn., the Mexican indi-
gent was studied for a year by the Inter-
national Institute. The problem here was
a result of the importation of Mexican
labor willing to work for wages less than
natives would accept. When lower wages
became general, the imported Mexican
found himself an unpopular competitor
for jobs and an equally unwelcome candi-
date, for relief. Recommending a basic
approach to the problem, the Institute
suggests that: Mexicans must be accepted
by the state and its counties; must be
given employment at a fair wage ; should
be encouraged in gaining citizenship and
education, including the teaching of Span-
ish and English to children and English
to parents; and that efforts should be
made to counteract the development of a
sense of inferiority in the young.
Against Crime
V\/HILE the future is not yet de-
* termined for the Big Brother and
Big Sister Federation, Inc., or for the
Crime Prevention Institute, organiza-
tions which the late Rowland C. Shel-
don directed, both are being studied
with an eye to continuing activity.
The executive committee of the fed-
eration has appointed a committee, Louis
L. Mann of Chicago, chairman, to study
the need for the organization's services,
its function, financial support and loca-
tion of headquarters. A report is expected
in July. Meantime, the committee has
voted to continue the organization's ac-
tivities and to meet its small indebted-
ness, mostly owed to Mr. Sheldon's
estate. . . . Frederic M. Thrasher of
New York University, chairman of the
committee studying the Crime Preven-
tion Institute, reports that definite ac-
tion has not been voted, but that the
majority of directors are in favor of con-
tinuing the organization. If funds are
made available "it is hoped to make the
institute a real clearing house of infor-
mation in the field of criminology."
Everybody's Proposing — New in-
struments to combat crime — particularly
juvenile crime — are being proposed on all
sides. Within recent weeks, in New York
City alone, responsible sources have sug-
gested or "urged" : a new department
within the board of education, solely to
study and deal with juvenile delinquency
and maladjustment; crime prevention
through "properly administered schools,"
with earlier vocational training; a non-
partisan recreational planning and ad-
visory council appointed by the mayor,
to work for improved recreational ac-
tivities. A start has been made on a chain
of youth centers, operating under the
Juvenile Aid Bureau in the police de-
partment, with the cooperation of the
board of education and the Works Prog-
ress Administration.
New York has also a new Citizens'
Committee on Control of Crime organ-
ized to combat racketeering and improve
the administration of justice.
Local Action — Pointing to taverns as
"Chicago's popular recreation . . . out-
numbering any other type of recreational
place," the Juvenile Protective Associa-
tion of that city has reported a special
study of the problem. The study was
occasioned, says Jessie F. Binford, di-
rector of the association, by increasing
complaints of a condition dangerous and
demoralizing to the community.
The study found 1105 taverns, among
some 9015 retail liquor establishments,
which were violating one or more city
ordinances or liquor control laws. The
police took up 786 of the 983 tavern
violations reported to them, but found
"actual" violation in only forty, the of-
fenses mostly relating to the "obstructed
view" and closing ordinances. Poor light-
ing, unsanitary premises, closing-hour
violations, employment of minors as hos-
tesses, sales to minors, soliciting to pros-
titution, indecent entertainment and gam-
bling were among violations reported by
the association's investigators. (Taverns
in Chicago. From the association, 816
Halsted Street, Chicago.)
The Recreation Commission of San
Francisco, a city and county public
agency, works for crime prevention
through recreational guidance by "di-
rectors-at-large," who as their title indi-
cates, work "at large" in assigned dis-
tricts, unhampered by responsibility for
any special centers. Directors find and
refer individual boys, groups or "gangs"
and direct them to suitable public or
private recreation centers. They work
with the juvenile court, diagnostic school,
police department, children's protective
society, social service division of the
relief administration, visiting nurses, pub-
lic dance hall supervisors, foster home
bureaus, and schools. A director must
know the people of his district, their
social habits, economic status and the
subversive influences which exist in the
community. Not only does this program
work toward delinquency prevention, it
often brings underprivileged children to
a place in the recreational sun and helps
to substitute desirable group activity for
undesirable.
In Boston, the juvenile court and the
Young Men's Christian Union are
sponsoring a new citizenship training
group for boys on probation between
ages thirteen and seventeen. Boys are
expected to report at the "Y" the first
Monday following their court appear-
ance and to attend the training group for
six weeks, five days a week, from 4 to
6 p.m. Each boy is studied and given
activities designed to reveal his personal-
ity and problems. A program of group
activities suited to his needs then is ar-
ranged for him. Cost of the project, still
in an experimental stage, is being met
from private sources.
New Deal Needed — A complete
overhauling of vocational education in
New York's state correctional institu-
tions for youths is urged in the report of
a special commission, appointed last year
by Governor Lehman with Prof. N. L.
Engelhardt of Teachers College as chair-
man. More money must be spent on per-
sonnel and equipment and the system
drastically revised in spirit and in prac-
tice if inmates are to be returned to
society with the ability and the desire
to sustain themselves. The alternative
is "crime rampant or continued incarcer-
ation." Placement facilities for released
prisoners closely linked to the vocational
training given during incarceration are
strongly recommended. The replacement
of inmate teachers by civilians is urged
as an absolute necessity, as is also a
director of education in each institution
"with a background of training and
experience sufficiently broad to warrant
giving him an important rank in the in-
stitutional staff."
Parole in Illinois — In the middle of
a sensational newspaper attack on Illi-
nois' parole system, Governor Homer
released the report of an investigating
commission, headed by Bishop J. H.
Schlarman of Peoria, which he had ap-
pointed last spring. This report presum-
ably will be the basis of legislative pro-
posals.
It recommends drastic reforms de-
signed to "take parole out of politics,"
notably by means of an appointed com-
mission of five "outstandingly qualified
experts" serving fifteen-year staggered
terms, to administer all state prisons and
county jails, and the parole and proba-
tion systems. All personnel would be un-
der the merit system, and all prisoners
would be reclassified and provided "with
work of some nature."
Coming — -The extensive research for
the Attorney General's Study of Release
Procedures [see The Way Out of Prison
by Barkev S. Sanders, The Survey, No-
vember 1936, page 330] has been com-
pleted for the most part and the consoli-
dated report is expected in mid-summer.
The Insurances
' I 'HE first annual report of the Social
Security Board was submitted to
Congress on February 8, three days be-
fore the Social Security Act completed
its first full year of operation. The re-
port traces developments of the act
through December 15, with a section on
administration and summaries of all ten
of the programs launched under the act.
It points out: "The plan would make a
MARCH 1937
83
sorry go of it if the whole burden of
keeping a people from destitution fell
upon its provisions. In fact, it is the
reasonable certainty of what industry
can provide that makes it possible for
government to undertake its task. It car-
ries no threat to the way of individual
thrift. On the contrary, it enlarges the
opportunities and lessens the hazards of
personal provisions."
Unemployment Compensation —
Extension of the date for payment of
unemployment insurance taxes on 1936
payrolls under the Security Act from
January 31 to April 30 was authorized
by the U. S. Treasury Department. The
decision to allow employers an additional
sixty days in which to file returns came
after many states which rushed unem-
ployment compensation laws through
December legislative sessions had com-
plained that there was insufficient time
to set up the administration of the laws
and to make collections by the end of
January. The extension assures that em-
ployers in these states will receive the
90 percent federal credit on their state
contributions.
A recent ruling of the board holds that
employes may not be required to sign
"severance reports" when they lose their
jobs. These reports are the forms an
employer sends to his state unemploy-
ment compensation administrator when
a worker subject to the law leaves his
employ. They include a statement of the
reasons for terminating employment.
The ruling is a move to forestall pos-
sible abuses which virtually might force
workers into agreeing to postponement
or possible loss of their benefits. In some
states the normal waiting period may be
extended for employes discharged for
misconduct or who give up their jobs.
In a few instances, the employe may
lose all right to benefits. Under the pro-
cedure ruled out by the board, employes
could have been required under duress,
when temporarily laid off, to sign sever-
ance reports stating that they were dis-
charged for misconduct, or quit with-
out good reason. If a worker expected
to be reemployed in the same establish-
ment, an employer could have exerted
considerable pressure on him to sign a
false or inaccurate report.
No new state laws have been passed
since the big December crop, which
brought the total of participating states
to thirty-five, and the District of Colum-
bia. At this writing, state bills have
passed one house of the legislatures of
Wyoming and Arkansas.
Financing — The annual report of the
Social Security Board states that fed-
eral appropriations for the entire social
security program for the year ending
June 30, 1937, total $467,269,000, ex-
clusive of vocational rehabilitation. In
addition to the sums set aside for public
assistance and other welfare programs,
and for the first appropriation to the old
age reserve account, $29 million is pro-
vided for grants to states to cover the
cost of administering their unemploy-
ment compensation laws, and $30,800,000
for the administrative expenses of the
board. Of the latter amount $12,400,000
is a special item for establishing initial
wage records under the old age benefit
program. Federal appropriations for
February to June of the preceding fiscal
year during which funds were available,
came to $41,935,000. The increase for
1936-7 in comparison with funds for the
preceding year represents first, a twelve
months' as against a five months' bud-
get; and, second, a program in which
participation under all provisions is rap-
idly approaching nation-wide coverage.
Current Problems — Personnel is one
of the major problems in organizing the
administration of an agency to function
in fields new to this country. The annual
report points out that the Social Security
Board is the first agency of its size to
be set up with all its employes appointed
under the classified civil service or ap-
proved by the commission as "experts or
attorneys." The "expert" classification
represents less than 5 percent of the en-
tire staff.
On December 15, the central and field
staff numbered 4189. Recruitment of per-
sonnel has been complicated by the lack
of suitable civil-service registers and by
the deluge of applications for positions.
Another administrative problem is
office space. Activities are now distrib-
uted in seven buildings in Washington,
with the Wage Records Office in Balti-
more, with resulting loss of efficiency
and increased costs. The board hopes
"that Congress may be so impressed with
the seriousness of this situation as to
authorize immediate construction of a
building to house all its activities."
Kxcepted — How complex are some of
the "border line cases" that crop up for
decision, as to who is and who is not
covered by the social insurances is illus-
trated in a recent announcement from
the Navy Department. The Secretary
of the Navy states that civilian em-
ployes of ship's service activities are not
considered eligible for benefits under the
Security Act, approving the finding of
Judge Advocate General Rowcliff that
these activities are "instrumentalities of
the United States, engaged in govern-
mental functions, pursuant to the laws
and regulations for the government of
the Navy."
Schools and Education
Dakota last month enacted
a measure forbidding compulsory
military training in tax-supported educa-
tional institutions. The new law will
affect the State Agricultural College at
Fargo and the University at Grand
Forks, both of which have hitherto had
compulsory drill. . . . Under a change
in faculty rules effective next September
for a two-year trial period, Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology will ex-
empt conscientious objectors from com-
pulsory military drill. As an alternative
to drill, these students will take certain
courses, among them such studies as his-
tory of arbitration, diplomacy, interna-
tional law, or possibly an independent
course chosen with the approval of a
committee of specialists. M.I.T. has re-
quired military training in the first and
second years since its establishment more
than seventy years ago.
Aid to Schools— The Harrison-Flet-
cher bill, providing federal aid to edu-
cation on a permanent basis, was rein-
troduced in Congress early in the ses-
sion. The bill provides for a federal ap-
propriation of $100 million the first year,
and an increase of $50 million a year
until an annual total of $300 million is
provided. The federal funds would be
apportioned among the states, to be used
by them for their public schools. Ap-
portionment would be based on the num-
ber of persons five to twenty years old
in each state. One of the chief ends of
SCHOOL EXPENDITURE
Currant e»p«ni«i per child in <vcraj«
d.ily .tt.nd.nce— 1933-34
INCOME AND CHILDREN
INCOME PER CAPITA
1934
comp.rtd CHILDREN 5-20 YEARS OLD PER
with 1000 ADULTS 80-65
STOP IMP , $300 Si.oo o
Office of Education
Based on data from Department of Commerce,
National Industrial Conference Board, U.S. Census
The range between "rich" and "poor" states in what they have and what they
spend for schools
84
THE SURVEY
the proposed legislation would be to
equalize in some degree the opportunity
for children living in "rich" and in
"poor" states. (See accompanying chart.)
The National Education Association is
sponsoring the bill.
Counseling Service — A recent sum-
mary of the work done by a Junior
Counseling Service (or job-seeking young
people of one state, Illinois, shows that
since the service was inaugurated in Feb-
ruary 1936, 25,836 young people have
been counseled, of whom 24,712 were
registered for employment. Through the
service, which has made nearly 8000
"employer contacts," jobs have been
found in private industry for more than
a third of the registrants, 9661. During
two months (September and October)
one job was found for each two youths
registered, with about 1500 placements
each month. The service is sponsored
jointly by the National Youth Adminis-
tration and the Illinois State Employ-
ment Service. The services are located
in five of the state employment offices
of Chicago, and in those of six other
cities. The counselor by interviews and
tests helps the young applicant make a
proper vocational choice and work out
a plan to find a place in his chosen field.
School Accounting — As an immedi-
ate practical aid growing out of the Re-
gents' Inquiry into the Character and
Cost of Public Education, New York
school officials are promised a uniform
system of accounting. The first stage in
the development of this uniform system
for the business management of schools
was reached last month in a try-out in-
stallation of the new plan at Cazenovia,
N. Y. It will be tried next in rural dis-
tricts, in villages and in cities. It pro-
vides a framework for all school costs,
and especially for budgetary control over
income and outgo. In announcing the
new plan, Luther Gulick, director of the
study, points out that while cost "has
none of the excitement of the discovery
of new educational methods" it is basic
to the whole educational program.
NYA Student Aid— The National
Youth Administration is extending aid
to approximately 10 percent of the college
population of the nation this year, at
an average monthly cost of about $1,-
869,000, according to a summary re-
cently released from the Washington of-
fice. The figures showed that 119,583
undergraduates and 5235 graduates — a
total of 124,818 — were enrolled under
the student aid program in 1686 col-
leges and universities throughout the
country. This is an increase of more
than 15,000 students and eighty-four in-
stitutions over similar totals for the
comparable period of 1935-6. The ratio
of applicants to students accepted is 2.17
to 1 for the nation as a whole, but many
states showed wide disparities. New
Mexico, for example, was able to pro-
vide student aid jobs to but one out of
each five and one half (statistical) stu-
dents requesting it. The ratio in Arizona
was 5 to 1, Mississippi 4.5 to 1. Aver-
age benefits on the NYA work projects
are $15 a month for undergraduates, $25
for graduates, with a maximum of $20
for the first group, $40 for the second.
The allowance depends on need.
Coming Events — The Summer Insti-
tute for Social Progress at Wellesley
College will hold its fifth session, July
10-24. The underlying theme of lectures
and discussions will be, The World
Challenge to Democracy— How Can
America Meet It? Details from Grace
L. Osgood, 14 West Elm Avenue, Wol-
laston, Mass. . . . The seventh confer-
ence of the World Federation of Educa-
tion Associations will be held at Tokyo,
Japan, August 2-7. Information from
Prof. Paul Monroe, Teachers College,
Columbia University, New York. . . .
The American Association for Adult
Education will meet at Skytop Lodge in
the Pocono Mountains, May 17-20.
Among the topics to be discussed are the
social significance of adult education,
democracy and adult education, a work-
ing philosophy of adult education. Pro-
gram from the association, 60 East 42
Street, New York. . . . National Boys'
and Girls' Week Committee (35 East
Wacker Drive, Chicago) announces that
the 1937 observance will be April 24-
May 1.
Study and Report — The Educational
Policies Commission, 1201 Sixteenth
Street, N. W., Washington, D. C., pub-
lishes The Unique Function of Educa-
tion in American Democracy, in which
the commission had the collaboration of
Charles A. Beard in formulating the
statement, and of Hendrik Willem Van
Loon in illustrating the book. (Price 50
cents.) . . . Activities of the American
Youth Commission presents in brief
pamphlet form the ambitious program of
this very active agency (744 Jackson
Place, Washington, D. C.). . . . Index
to Vocations is a survey over the mod-
ern field of work, with references to
books, pamphlets and magazine articles
on the hundreds of occupations listed.
(Compiled by Willodeen Price and
Zelma E. Ticen. H. W. Wilson Co.
106 pages. Price $1.25, postpaid of The
Survey.)
Professional
AMONG 715 new members admitted
"^^ last year to the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers, 97 percent are
college graduates and 82 percent have
attended graduate professional schools.
The group of new AASW members em-
ployed by public agencies outnumbers
those in private agencies — 59 percent to
38 percent. Although the AASW is some-
times thought of as made up of "execu-
tives" only 7 percent of the new mem-
bers are of that rank. Sixteen percent
are supervisors and 71 percent practi-
tioners. New members include former
students of all the professional schools in
the Association of Schools of Social Work
except of one school, newly admitted.
In the New York City chapter of AA-
SW, 138 new applications for member-
ship were received during the year, re-
sulting in fifty-two new members, twenty
one junior members, and two reinstate-
ments, with twenty-six applications denied
and others pending. More of these new
members are in the private family service
field than in any other.
Various and Sundry — Registered so-
cial workers in California now total 1569
as a result of examinations, three in all,
conducted by the Department of Regis-
tration and Certification of Social Work-
ers of the State Conference of Social
Work. The registration system, devel-
oped under the aegis of the conference
has wide state significance and prestige
but no actual official status. . . . The
American Foundation for the Blind, 15
West 16 Street, New York, has reorgan-
ized and expanded its free confidential
employment service for agencies for the
blind and invites inquiries from such
agencies and from applicants for positions.
Word of Mouth— The New York So-
cial Work Publicity Council is sponsoring
a series of informal talks by distinguished
speakers on How the Arts Portray Social
Problems. Sessions to come after this is-
sue reaches its readers deal with the
play, the novel and the graphic arts. For
details on time and place, query the coun-
cil, 130 East 22 Street, New York.
For information concerning the spring
1937 series of lectures sponsored by the
League for Industrial Democracy in
more than two dozen cities all over the
United States, write to Mary Fox, execu-
tive secretary, 112 East 19 Street, New
York. Among this year's speakers are
Norman Thomas, Roger Baldwin, Jen-
nie Lee, Harry W. Laidler, Eduard C.
Lindeman and Scott Nearing.
Professional Appraisal — Baltimore
has been studying its social work person-
nel as a means of estimating the need for
a local professional school of social work.
Of a possible total of 449 workers, 211,
from thirty-three agencies, answered the
questionnaire of the Council of Social
Agencies. Some forty-five were of execu-
tive rank. Of the total, twenty-nine had
finished at graduate and five at under-
graduate schools of social work. Sixty-
six had attended such schools without
completing the courses. Of those without
specialized social work education the
MARCH 1937
85
majority were college graduates eligible
for graduate professional schools. Al-
though about half of the Baltimore agen-
cies allow study leave to a limited num-
ber of their staffs, few, it was found,
were requesting such leaves. Of all an-
swering the questionnaire 94 percent in-
dicated that they probably would attend
either full or part time classes if such
were locally available.
With these findings to go on, commit-
tees to provide educational opportunities
forged ahead. At present two basic courses
have been arranged through the coopera-
tion of the University of Maryland, with
credit toward a graduate degree if and
when the university establishes a school
of social work.
In Print — Chicago's Social Service Year
Book, a chart and history of social work
in the city during tumultuous 1935, is
now ready but in quantities for only lim-
ited distribution. A new Directory of
Social Service is also ready. (Price, in
Chicago, cloth $1.25; paper, $1. Else-
where add 10 cents. Both from the Coun-
cil of Social Agencies, 203 North Wabash
Avenue.)
A new "almanac notebook," issued by
Community Chests and Councils, Inc., as
a supplement to last year's News Alma-
nac, tempts the user to record his own
community's welfare datebook in its blank
calendar pages. Its convenient form and
lively new publicity suggestions should
make it a valuable elbow jogger and
strengthener for the busy desk. (Price
35 cents direct from CC and C, Inc., 155
East 44 Street, New York; News Alma-
nac, 1936, 50 cents; the set, 60 cents.)
Social Hygiene
TT is "conservatively estimated that
about six million men, women and
children throughout the nation are in-
fected with syphilis, although not one in
ten is under treatment by a licensed
physician," reports the American Social
Hygiene Association. "This minimum is
maintained from year to year by new
cases which thus far offset reductions
through cure of patients. It is especially
tragic that the age group in which the
largest number of infections occur is
between sixteen to thirty."
Odious Comparison — "Denmark,
Norway and Sweden, with a combined
population of about fourteen millions,
produced together only 1600 cases of
syphilis in 1933 while Illinois with less
than eight million people reported 13,389
cases during the same year," says the
Illinois Health Messenger. Compulsory
notification and compulsory treatment
of infected patients seem to be the chief
reasons for the almost complete eradica-
tion of syphilis in Scandinavian countries.
"While the Danes, Norwegians and
Swedes are no less jealous of personal
freedom and liberty than Americans,
they regard liberty as the power to do
right and they do not believe that it is
right for an infected person to assume
the privilege of spreading syphilis."
National Problem — Under the So-
cial Security Act many states have ex-
tended the work of venereal disease con-
trol. The U. S. Public Health Service
reports that seven states have added a
full time venereal disease control officer
to the staff of their departments of
health. Nine already had such full time
officers. Only three states furnish free
drugs to all classes of patients for the
treatment of syphilis, one having added
this service since Social Security funds
became available. For several years free
drugs for the treatment of indigent pa-
tients have been provided, to some ex-
tent, in thirty states and the District
of Columbia. Seven additional states are
now also supplying them. Eight states
and the District of Columbia report in-
creased facilities for follow-up work.
There are about a thousand free, pay,
and part-pay clinics for the treatment
of syphilis and gonorrhea in the United
States, or approximately one clinic to
every 130,000 of the population, although
in fifteen states and the District of
Columbia the ratio of clinics to popu-
lation is higher. So far the parts of the
country with the largest Negro popula-
tion have fewer clinics than the average
for the whole country. Twenty-five
states, the District of Columbia and
Alaska, report the development of new
work in venereal diseases under the
provisions of the Social Security Act.
"United and sustained effort by all health
officers is necessary and will be achieved.
The syphilis problem is a national one."
Community Organization -- With
the active assistance of Margaret Wells
Wood of the field staff of the Ameri-
can Social Hygiene Association, the Bu-
reau of Child Hygiene and Public
Health Nursing of the Illinois State
Department of Health, Dr. Grace A.
Wightman, director, is conducting a
state-wide program, of a year or more
duration, of organization of new social
hygiene groups. Mrs. Wood's services
during shorter periods have developed
such definite community interest that it
is believed that this sustained effort will
produce public opinion to support a
permanent social hygiene program for
the state.
Signs — With the help of the National
Youth Administration, the New York
State Department of Health is placing
signs in public places throughout the
state emphasizing the curability of
syphilis by early and appropriate treat-
ment In Chicago Dr. Herman N.
Bundeson, health commissioner, is said to
be planning to use red quarantine pla-
cards when a patient refuses to submit
to treatment for venereal disease or
flagrantly violates the precautions or-
dered by his doctor. Dr. Bundeson made
it clear, however, that such placards
would be used with discrimination and
with proper respect for the sensibilities
of innocent victims.
The Public's Health
'IPHE U. S. Conference of Mayors is
promoting a clearing house for pub-
lic health administrators where doctors
with a preference for public health work
can register their qualifications and
where smaller cities will be able to get
information when needing public health
officers. It is time to break down the idea,
says Mayor La Guardia of New York,
president of the conference, "that a may-
or's family doctor makes a good health
commissioner."
Eternal Vigilance — Diphtheria
deaths in 1936 in New York City, were
only thirty-six as compared with the
annual average death toll of about 750
for the ten year period ending in 1929.
However Dr. John L. Rice, health com-
missioner, warns parents against a false
sense of security. Unless every child
under ten is immunized there will be, he
says, a rise in morbidity and mortality
from this disease. Every falling off in
immunizations is followed by a rising
curve of cases reported.
Cost of Chronics — A group of 248
patients suffering from chronic or long
drawn-out illnesses has already cost the
city of New York $592,176 for a total
of 624 days of hospital care and will
continue to cost $235,350 each year,
says Dr. S. S. Goldwater, commissioner
of hospitals. The group represents only
a fraction of the chronically ill cared
for by the city, ior longer or shorter
periods, who cannot expect significant
relief until medical science makes further
advances. The cost to the city is enorm-
ous, comments Dr. Goldwater, in com-
parison with the funds necessary to study
the causes of chronic diseases and the
means of more adequate relief of the
various disabilities.
Better Teeth— The New York City
Hoard of Education next will spend $20,-
000 to equip twenty new dental clinics
in the city schools. However, according
to Joseph Sheehan, associate superinten-
dent of schools, "All the dentists in the
state could not keep up with the dental
needs of the city's pupil population." . . .
The Florida State Board of Health has
created a new bureau of dental health,
with Dr. E. C. Geiger, of Jacksonville,
in charge. It is planned to give every
86
school child in the state a dental examina-
tion followed by recommendations to par-
ents. A free dentistry plan for under-
privileged children is being worked out.
A recent survey indicated that 75 to 90
percent of the school children of the state
suffer from dental defects.
Glean-Up Squad — A hundred young
men, taken from the eligible list of the
New York police department have been
appointed as special patrolmen in the
city's Department of Sanitation. After
instruction in sections of the sanitary
code they will be equipped with special
uniforms and sent out to promote public
interest in a cleaner and tidier city, es-
pecially "spotless sidewalks."
Hospitals
CIXTY-FOUR percent of all hospital
construction in the thirty-seven east-
ern states during the past three years
was financed by PWA loans or grants.
Paying the Bills -- Development of
group plans for payment of hospital
expenses are among major objectives of
the American Hospital Association for
1937, says its president, Dr. C. W.
Munger of Westchester County, N. Y.
"Aggressive activity in the guidance of
existing plans for group payment for
hospital care; encouragement of new
plans where needed and active assistance
in organizing them properly; vigilance
in holding all group plans in line with
what is best for members and for hos-
pitals."
A budgeting service for patients has
been inaugurated by the Milwaukee
County Medical Society, as a means of
meeting the problem of paying for med-
ical care. The patient is referred "by his
physician to the service, and all charges
of physician, specialist and hospital are
weighed against an analysis of the pa-
tient's income. Payments, which may be
made over a ten-month period, are pro-
rated to those who have rendered service.
The costs of the budgeting service are
met by a 10 percent fee deducted from
amounts paid by the patient.
Against Emergency — The voluntary
hospitals of New York City have been
asked by Dr. S. S. Goldwater, commis-
sioner of hospitals, to enter a "gentle-
men's agreement" with the city institu-
tions to provide more facilities during
epidemics. By postponing any non-emer-
gency surgical cases at such times, Dr.
Goldwater estimates from 3000 to 5000
additional hospital beds would be avail-
able. . . . The New York City Board
of Estimate has budgeted $129,000 more
than last year for payments to private
hospitals for the care of the indigent
sick, the reason for this generosity being
I,
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After a thorough investigation of the evidence for and against at the
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(1935)
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HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md
the reduced income of such institutions
from contributors and private patients
and the exhaustion of reserves during the
depression.
Opportunity — With one half of all
illness today attributed to mental dis-
orders the general hospital is overlook-
ing an opportunity of rendering greater
service to the community if it does not
make provision for such patients, says
Dr. Lucius R. Wilson, of the John Sealy
Hospital, Galveston, Texas, in The
Modern Hospital. He suggests a special
department for psychopathic patients
similar to the special units for obstetrics,
pediatrics or contagious diseases. Such
service would be especially appreciated,
he holds, when the patient otherwise
would have to go to a hospital at a
distance far removed from his family.
The plan, he says, has worked out in
some hospitals with gratifying results.
People and Things
ITH the resignation of John G.
Winant from the Social Security
Board — this time for keeps he says —
President Roosevelt "raised" Arthur J.
Altmeyer to the chairmanship and ap-
answerhiQ advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
87
pointed Murray J. Latimer as the third
member. Mr. Latimer, at thirty-six
rated as an expert in old age pension
and benefits systems, has been chairman
of the Railroad Retirement Board.
In accepting Mr. Winant's resigna-
tion the President said: "I am particu-
larly glad to have your suggestions in
regard to the integration of future ac-
tivities [of the Social Security Board]
with those of other government agencies.
This I shall want to discuss with you
later on in connection with other prob-
lems of reorganization affecting execu-
tive departments and agencies." Which
was taken by Washington they-sayers
to indicate that Mr. Winant is slated for
a cabinet post when and if the new de-
partments are established.
Doctors and Nurses — -The Milbank
Memorial Fund has announced the ap-
pointment of Dr. Frank G. Boudreau
as executive director, succeeding the late
Edgar Sydenstricker. Dr. Boudreau since
1925 has served in various capacities with
the Health Organization of the League
of Nations, most recently as chief of
epidemiological intelligence and public
health statistics and of the league's
system of liaison with health adminis-
trations. He is a graduate of McGill
University and for years was epidemi-
ologist of the Ohio Department of
Health.
Dr. Samuel W. Hamilton, formerly
with the Westchester Division of the
New York Hospital, now is directing
a hospital survey for the National Com-
mittee for Mental Hygiene. Eloise
Shields, for five years director of nurs-
ing at the same hospital, has resigned.
She is succeeded by Elizabeth Bixler, re-
cently educational director at the Wor-
cester State Hospital in Massachusetts.
. . . The new head of the department
of public health and preventive medicine
at Cornell University Medical College,
New York, is Dr. Wilson G. Smillie,
recently of Harvard University. Part
of his responsibilities will be to represent
the college in its activities at the new
Kips Bay-Yorkville health center now
under construction by the city Depart-
ment of Health.
Dr. David L. Williams, of Bedford,
Mass., has been appointed Massachusetts
State Commissioner of Mental Diseases
succeeding Dr. Winifred Overholser. . . .
The new superintendent of nurses and
principal of the school of nursing at the
New England Deaconess Hospital, Bos-
ton, is Marjorie Davis, from a similar
connection with the New York Post-
Graduate Medical School and Hospital.
News Notes — Mary van Kleeck of the
Russell Sage Foundation, heads a com-
mittee to organize membership support
for Social Work Today under the name,
Social Work Today Cooperators. The
magazine now is published by the Na-
tional Coordinating Committee of So-
cial Service Employe Groups.
Red Cross societies in some thirty-five
countries have contributed to a special
fund of the League of Red Cross So-
cities to perpetuate the memory of its late
chairman, John Barton Payne. Income
from the fund, which totals some 106,000
French francs, will be used at the dis-
cretion of the board of governors, with
preference to projects calculated to pro-
mote cooperation between national Red
Cross societies.
The recently organized New York
City Social Service Employes Union, Lo-
cal 20334 of the American Federation of
Labor, with membership composed of
employes in private social agencies, has
begun publication of a news sheet, Field
and Office. The union, which is of the
"vertical" type (only executives excluded)
at last reports had members from thirty-
four private agencies.
The Monday Evening Club of Wash-
ington, D. C., one of the veterans among
social worker organizations "for confer-
ence and free discussion," celebrated its
forty-first birthday last month with a
large dinner. Dr. Richard Cabot's often
quoted definition of social service, "the
effort of some of us to prevent the life
being squeezed out of any of us" remains,
the club agreed, the best statement of its
objectives.
"Outstanding citizen, contributing in a
distinctive manner to the advancement
of the interests of the community" was
only one of the flowers in the verbal bou-
quet presented to Oscar Schoenherr,
managing director of the Welfare Fed-
eration of the Oranges and Maplewood,
N. J. by the Chamber of Commerce and
Civics of the several communities. Mr.
Schoenherr, who has been with the fed-
eration since its organization in 1919,
was absent when the dinner in his honor
was held, but the approval of the 400
dinejs was so enthusiastic that its echoes
surely penetrated to his Florida retreat.
Meetings — The National Tuberculosis
Association will meet May 31-June 3 in
Milwaukee. . . . The Eastern Regional
Conference of the Child Welfare League
of America will be held April 23-24 in
New York City; the Southern Regional
in New Orleans, March 4-5, and the
Midwest Regional in Chicago, late in
March.
Boy Scouts of America who last year
were disappointed when their "jamboree"
had to be cancelled on account of the
prevalence of infantile paralysis near
Washington, D. C. were given a "person-
al invitation" by President Roosevelt to
hold the postponed event in Washington
June 30-July 9. A tent city to accommo-
date 25,000 boys "within the shadow of
the Washington monument," is promised.
Trim little girls in
uniform are much in evi-
dence this month as the
Girl Scouts celebrate
their twenty-fifth anni-
versary. Membership,
girls' and leaders', has rolled up to some
400,000, a big growth since the day
when Juliette Low brought together a
few people in her Savannah home and
proposed an American organization pat-
terned after the English Girl Guides.
New Jobs — Justin Miller, lately spe-
cial assistant to Attorney General Homer
Cummings, in charge of the Survey of
Release Procedures, has been appointed
to the federal Board of Tax Appeals —
said to be a long time and enviable job.
. . . Robert J. Myers, brother of How-
ard Myers who directs WPA's division
of research, has gone to Washington to
head the division of statistical research of
the U. S. Children's Bureau. Emma A.
Winslow of the bureau's staff is now act-
ing as consultant on statistics in certain
aspects of the social security program.
Gladys Collins Hunter has been ap-
pointed executive secretary of the Jersey
City Council of Social Agencies. . . .
Agnes M. Forman has left the Boston
Children's Aid Association for the Chil-
dren's Division of the Indiana State De-
partment of Welfare. . . . Vera Moren
Thomas, recently a visiting teacher in
Kansas City, Mo., is the new general
secretary of the Wichita, Kan. Family
Welfare Society, succeeding the late
Merrick Woods who held the post for
twenty-six years.
Turnover — Among recent newcomers
to the staff of the Boys Clubs of Amer-
ica, along with Sanford Bates, the new
director, are: Thomas J. Craighead, with
twenty-five years of boys' work experi-
ence in various parts of the country; A.
Boyd Hines, lately with Washington,
D. C. Community Chest; William H.
Montgomery, from twenty-three years
in boys' work in Wilmington, N. C., four
of them as judge of the juvenile court,
Aaron H. Fahringer from Big Brother
and boys club work in Scranton, Pa., and
Palmer Bevis, well known publicity man,
identified with the Boys Club of New
York.
Louise C. Odencrantz, of New York,
lately with the Social Science Research
Council, has been appointed supervisor of
the training unit in the division of place-
ment and unemployment insurance of the
New York State Labor Department. . . .
Frank W. Murphy, press representative
of the Community Chests and Councils,
Inc., for the 1936 Mobilization for Hu-
man Needs is now financial secretary for
the New York State Charities Aid Asso-
ciation. . . . The new publicity director
for the Detroit Community Fund is
James D. Gamble, from the Detroit
News, succeeding Golda G. Meyer who
resigned to become Mrs. Julian Krolik.
The tables were turned on the Social
Security Board, arch "snatcher" of per-
sonnel, when Governor Murphy of
• Michigan took James J. Bryant from its
regional staff as director of the State De-
partment of Public Welfare. Mr. Bryant
was "raised" in the State Emergency
Welfare Relief Commission, and his ap-
pointment is regarded as particularly
happy in view of the anticipated consoli-
dation of the department and the com-
mission. William Haber, seasoned di-
rector of the EWRC, is standing by un-
til the consolidation is affected although
he is already an active member of the
faculty of the department of economics
and the graduate school of public and
social administration of the University
of Michigan, and an equally active mem-
ber of the State Unemployment Com-
pensation Commission, now in the throes
of setting up the organization to admin-
ister Michigan's new law which will
cover some 1,400,000 workers.
The Family Service Association of
Washington, D. C. has added to its case
work staff Suzanne P. Lawson, from the
Smith College School of Social Work. . . .
Mary Wysor Keefer, has left the social
service department of the University of
Chicago clinic in favor of the Crippled
Children's Division of the U. S. Chil-
88
THE SURVEY
dren's Bureau. . . . Irene Dickson has
come to the staff of the Strong Residence,
of the Washington, D. C, YWCA.
Elected — James H. S. Brossard, pro-
fessor of sociology at the University of
Pennsylvania, is the newly elected presi-
dent of the Pennsylvania Birth Control
Federation.
Edmond J. Butler has resigned from
the health-taxing position of chairman
of the New York State Probation Com-
mission of which he has been a member
for twenty-six years. Cecilia D. Patten
of Saratoga Springs is the newly elected
chairman.
Training — A seminar on interpretation
of social work, under the tutelage of
Louis Resnick, director of the Social Se-
curity Board's informational service is
under way this spring at the Catholic
University School of Social Work, Wash-
ington, D. C.
For the year 1937-38 Teachers College,
Columbia University, offers a limited
number of scholarships and teaching fel-
lowships in education for the handi-
capped. Information from Merle E.
Frampton, office of the secretary, Teach-
ers College, New York. ... A few
scholarships available to graduate stu-
dents for study and special training in
boys' work at the University of Notre
Dame are offered by the Knights of
Columbus Supreme Council Boy Life
Bureau. Information from John J. Cont-
way, at the bureau, Knights of Columbus,
New Haven, Conn.
Peace Collection — A collection of
materials dealing with peace, notably
those given to Swarthmore College by
Jane Addams, has been designated the
Jane Addams Peace Collection and is be-
ing housed in the Biddle Memorial Li-
brary at the college. Ellen Starr Brinton,
acting curator of the collection, invites
contributions.
Slip — Two Miss Browns, both eminent
social workers and writers, were just
too much for editorial accuracy last
month. The Russell Sage Foundation's
best seller, Social Work as a Profession,
which this department attributed to Jo-
sephine, now WPA's Miss Brown, was
written by Esther Lucile, the founda-
tion's Miss Brown. Apologies to
Brown girls.
the
Deaths
r AUD O'FARRELL SWARTZ, sec-
retary of the New York State De-
partment of Labor since 1931, and for
many years an official and board member
of the National Women's Trade Union
League. Although not a lawyer she knew
all the ins and outs of the workmen's
compensation law, and frequently acted
as referee in compensation cases.
JOHN NOLEN of Cambridge, Mass., pio-
neer in modern city and regional plan-
ning who, during his distinguished profes-
sional career, engaged in more than 400
public planning projects. He was a con-
sultant of the housing division of PWA
and of the Resettlement Administration
and adviser to the National Parks Ser-
vice.
HELEN P. McCoRMiCK for twenty years
an active layman in Catholic social work
in Brooklyn, founder and president of
the Brooklyn Catholic Big Sisters, Inc.
The Public's Health
DEATH FIGHTERS, by Paul de Kruif and
A. M. Smith, Detroit Evening News. Free.
Reprints of the seventeen articles which
ushered in Detroit's active campaign
against tuberculosis. [See The Survey,
February 1937, page S3.]
HOW TB CAN BE WIPED OUT IN
YOUR COMMUNITY, prepared by The
Country Gentlemen, Curtis Publishing Com-
pany, Philadelphia, Pa. Free.
A good example of magazine coopera-
tion in promoting the Detroit campaign.
OX THE WITNESS STAND, by J.
Weston Walch, Portland, Me. Distributed
by the Public Relations Bureau, Medical
Society of the State of New York, 2 East
103 Street, New York.
Questions and answers on "the evidence
on compulsory health insurance," answer-
ing at least to the author's satisfaction,
his own question, "Do you want to be
classified or cured?"
INFANT MORTALITY IN MEMPHIS, by
Ella Oppenheimer, M.D. U. S. Children's
Bureau Publication No. 233. Price IS cents
from superintendent of documents, Wash-
ington, D. C.
A study, requested by the city of
Memphis, of outstanding factors in its
high infant mortality rate. Many of the
recommendations already are being fol-
lowed.
SOCIAL SECURITY SERVICES FOR
MOTHERS AND CHILDREN ADMIN-
ISTERED BY THE U. S. CHILDREN'S
BUREAU. Free from the bureau.
Reprints of authoritative articles by
bureau officials, with a table of federal
funds available to states for the services
described and a list of state agencies ad-
ministering them.
THE PAMPHLET SHELF
PUBLIC HEALTH NURSING IN PRO-
GRAMS FOR CRIPPLED CHILDEN, by
Naomo Deutch, R.N.
A STATISTICAL STUDY OF STILL-
BIRTHS IN HOSPITALS, by Elizabeth
C. Tandy, Sc.D.
PROGRESS IN MATERNAL AND CHILD
WELFARE UNDER THE SOCIAL SE-
CURITY ACT, by Martha M. Eliot, M.D.
Reprints of articles which have appeared
recently in professional journals. Free
from U. S. Children's Bureau.
Against Crime
IS PRISON REFORM GOOD BUSINESS?
by Sam A. Lewisohn, 61 Broadway, New
York. Free from the author.
One of the memorable addresses given
before the last congress of the American
Prison Association.
COORDINATING COUNCILS: How SHALL
THEY BE ORGANIZED? by Kenneth S.
Beam. National Probation \ssociation, 50
West 50 Street, New York. Price 10 cents,
less in quantity.
Essential steps in forming local groups
"to combat the growing menace of
juvenile crime," as they were taken in
California and elsewhere.
A STUDY OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS WITH
A SOLUTION. Issued in four sections:
CRIME IN ITS BIOLOGICAL ASPECT (Price
25 cents), STERILIZATION AND THE ORGAN-
IZED OPPOSITION (Price 25 .cents), HERED-
ITY AND TWELVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS (Price
25 cents), NEW JERSEY'S SOCIALLY IN-
ADEQUATE CLASSES (Price 25 cents). Pre-
pared by Marion S. Norton, 174 Prospect
Avenue, Princeton, N. J., as chairman of
the Department of Social Hygiene of the
Princeton League of Women Voters.
Studies which have had a large circula-
tion in mimeograph form now available in
print.
Miscellaneous
LEGISLATIVE TRENDS IN PUBLIC RE-
LIEF AND ASSISTANCE, prepared by
Robert C. Lowe and John L. Holcombe for
the Division of Social Research of the
Works Progress Administration. Washington.
D. C. Free.
An analysis of legislative developments,
financial and administrative, over more
than six years of extremely rapid change.
CURRENT TRENDS IN SOCIAL AD-
JUSTMENTS THROUGH INDIVIDU-
ALIZED TREATMENT, by Margaret E.
Rich. Family Welfare Association of
America. 130 East 22 Street, New York.
Price 20 cents.
An address of particular interest to
American social workers given at the
Third International Conference of Social
Work in London last summer.
PROSPECTIVE NEW FIELDS OF OCCU-
PATIONAL OPPORTUNITY, by John D.
Beatty. Pittsburgh Personnel Association,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Changes going on in various occupa-
tional fields, with some suggestions for
those seeking employment.
MINIMUM-SALARY LAWS FOR TEACH-
ERS. Committee on Tenure, National
Education Association, 1201 Sixteenth Street
N. W., Washington. Price 25 cents.
A study of varying types of minimum
wage laws for teachers now found in
twenty states, and how they operate.
BETTER MOTION PICTURES. A DIS-
CUSSION COURSE, by Fred Eastman and
Edward Ouellette. Published for the Inter-
denominational Committee on Cooperative
Publication of Adult Texts by The Pilgrim
Press, 14 Beacon Street, Boston. Price 25
cents.
Basis for group discussions of the social
significance of "movies."
MARCH 1937
89
Readers Write
Those Juvenile Courts
To THE EDITOR: Defending juvenile
courts, I reject the line of defense taken
by Charles L. Chute in his article, On
Juvenile Courts, in the February Mid-
monthly Survey. He would perpetuate
an expediency policy of bigger-and-better
courts-as-they-are. Local conditions may
necessitate this, but should not obscure
a general principle now increasingly ac-
cepted by careful thinkers on the subject:
that the job of a court as such is not
treatment but adjudication (hearing dis-
puted claims, impartial factfinding, de-
ciding, issuing orders, enforcing them, but
not carrying out the social treatment
process). Adjudication and treatment are
each most effective doing teamwork but
each under its separate and appropriate
auspices. Courts should have expanded
powers — but in jurisdiction, not in case
work. Treatment clinics and coordinating
councils should be multiplied — but not
under judiciary administration; nor with-
out courts to fall back upon for sanction
in difficult cases.
To call the judge a "director" would
merely compound the confusion: the
same person should not be judge and
executor. By Mr. Chute's admission most
cases need no judicial compulsion; wel-
fare and educational auspices have
proved increasingly effective in behavior
problem situations. But for the 10 per-
cent, the sanction of a real court is
needed. The National Probation Asso-
ciation will have its hands full in the im-
provement of the courts in their legiti-
mate functions of investigation and dis-
position of situations not soluble with-
out compulsion.
This point of view has been expressed
in numerous articles by many authors. I
myself expressed it in my book, The
Juvenile Court and the Community
[1914] and in the articles Should Courts
Do Case Work [The Survey, September
15, 1928] and Some Suppressed Premises
in the Glueck Controversy [The Journal
of Criminal Law, May-June, 1935].
THOMAS D. ELIOT
Northwestern University
Beyond Social Practices
To THE EDITORS: For ten years I have
been working in a colored and white
community adjacent to that "Between
Stacks and Spires," area covered by the
study cited by Newton D. Baker in his
article, A Clean Sweep for a Fresh
Start, in the January Survey. Naturally
his references come close home to me.
While I agree that a survey can
freshen and vitalize the efforts of social
agencies, I believe the problem is more
deeply rooted than Mr. Baker makes it
appear. He glosses too easily over the
absence of family life in these communi-
ties. He offers evidence that parental in-
fluences are lacking but fails to admit
their part in building youth. From time
to time, in The Survey and elsewhere, he
has shown his concern over the lack of
sturdiness and character in youth, yet
apparently he fails to recognize that
youth with strength and self-respect can-
not be conceived and nurtured in a fam-
ily which is in a state of chaos.
Russian, Pole and Negro parents may
have come from environments where ex-
istence was simple, and often on crusts.
But even so it was rooted in generations
where family life formed the base for
character development. Negroes brought
north from a simple rural background
and plunged into a turmoil of urban so-
cial problems, Russians and Poles who
have always worked hard and now face
insecurity and defeat, mothers of peas-
ant background who are cleaning at night
or sewing for WPA to support their
fatherless children, all these present
problems which reach far beyond social
work practices. To my way of thinking,
"Clean Sweep Surveys" such as that of
the Brookings Institution are needed
more urgently than surveys of commun-
ity social facilities.
SYDNEY B. MARKEY
Headworker, The Friendly Inn,
Cleveland, Ohio
Financial Housekeeping
To THE EDITOR: Anyone concerned with
the sound financial management of state
institutions for dependents might well
study the 1936 report of John C. Weigel,
fiscal supervisor of the Department of
Welfare of Illinois, entitled, Business
Principles Applied to Public Welfare.
A total of about 49,000 persons are
cared for through the welfare depart-
ment— more than two thirds of them on
account of mental illness, about one
thirtieth on account of physical incapacity,
and nearly one fourth on account of con-
flict with law. The department has
twelve divisions and manages twenty-
seven institutions. Mr. Weigel, as finan-
cial housekeeper, has kept the "family"
out of debt, and at the same time has
raised its standard of living. He has re-
quired agreement between storeroom ac-
counts and general ledger accounts, has
developed a type of auditing designed to
educate the business staffs of the insti-
tutions and has required inspections which
have improved and standardized the
quality of materials supplied. Economies
in requisitions have been brought about
by better handling of what is known as
the "kitchen forecast" which covers tin-
expected yield from institutional farms
and gardens.
In a foreword to Mr. Weigel's report,
A. L. Bowen, director of the Department
of Welfare, says: "Except for such care-
ful consideration of each dollar, the de-
partment never could have met its obli-
gations under rising prices and drought
and bug destruction of farm and garden
produce during each of the years of
1933, '34, '35 and '36."
JEAN McCLUER WATSON
Washington, D. C.
Addenda
To THE EDITOR: If any readers of your
comment, Hospites, on page 80 would like
further information about the agency's
work, such as numbers aided and in what
ways, the chairman, Mrs. John M. Glenn,
or myself, would be happy to furnish de-
tails. Hospites' need of funds is acute at
the present moment, and checks large or
small will be most gratefully received.
JOANNA C. COLCORD
130 East 22 Street
New York
More than Interested
To THE EDITOR: Perhaps you will be
interested to know of the number and
variety of readers served by a single sub-
scription to The Survey. After prompt
reading on my part each copy goes first
to a rural exponent of social economics,
next to a voluntary worker in the de-
pressed mining areas of South Wales —
when she is not needed in an East End
Settlement — and then to one who runs an
international club for girls in London
where the American members are the
final inheritors.
Jarvis Brook SYBIL M. GOULDER
Sussex, England
Heart Warmers
To THE EDITOR : I appreciate the fact that
that you have been so patient about my
renewal. Finances and nothing else were
the cause of my delay. I truly hope that
I shall never have to be without The Sur-
vey. It is the most helpful social work
magazine that I have ever found.
Kentucky E. S.
To THE EDITOR: Finances are a wee bit
better than they have been for several
years, so we can continue our subscription
to The Survey. This magazine helps to
keep us up to date and we sincerely
appreciate your sympathetic cooperation
whereby no issue has been lost to us.
After reading we pass our copies on to
the local Junior College Library where
they are very welcome.
Texas S. M.
90
THE SURVEY
Book Reviews
Will It Work?
PRISONS AND BEYOND, by Sanford Bates.
Macmillan. 334 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of
The Surrey.
' I A HOSE interested in modern prison
administration are overwhelmingly
grateful to Sanford Bates for the rare
combination of attitudes he has brought
to that field — humanity and a common
sense founded upon active experience in
the world of affairs, as lawyer, legislator
and administrator. These qualities have
been particularly useful in the prison
field because prison reform has suffered
from the hysterical spirit. The calm wis-
dom and direct practical humanity that
Mr. Bates has invariably displayed are
refreshing correctives. This spirit runs
all through the pages of the book. A
sentence of Mr. Bates' sums up the con-
clusions of many of us who are interested
in prison reform: "Notwithstanding the
provision for opportunities for improve-
ments, with steady employment at pro-
ductive labor, with a force of tactful and
intelligent prison guards, with suitable
surroundings, nourishing food, elevating
literature and stimulating recreation, no
permanent reformation can be expected
until in some mysterious manner the will
to reform can be instilled into the indi-
vidual personality."
A paragraph from Mr. Bates' con-
cluding chapter, Will It Work?, strikes
the keynote of the book and reflects the
author's New England background and
his common sense realism: "The advo-
cates of swift and sure punishment quote
triumphantly the experience of Delaware
and its whipping post and cite facts to
show that thieves give the little state
a wide berth (which they don't — as the
figures prove). But they do not explain
why the southern states with their chain
gangs, sweat box, lash, and stocks have
the highest crime and murder rates in
the United States."
Characteristic chapters, all approached
in the same spirit, include: Why Pris-
ons? Have Our Prisons Failed? Should
Prisoners Work When Other Men Can-
not? and When the Prison Door Opens.
Of particular interest is Mr. Bates' dis-
cussion of the methods of classification,
one of the federal Bureau of Prisons'
outstanding contributions to prison re-
form.
Especially in the chapter, Alternatives
to Imprisonment, has Mr. Bates shown
his calm perspective. Anyone who walks
through prisons and sees human beings
herded, more or less indiscriminately and
at great expense, must ask himself, "Are
there substitutes for prison?" In every
case, Mr. Bates measures these substi-
tutes— probation, fines, disabilities, resti-
tution, public work — by the same stand-
ard, ' Will it work?" It is this philosophic
spirit of open-mindedness that runs
through the entire book.
In Mr. Bates we have the rare spec-
tacle of the philosopher become admin-
istrator.
New York SAM A. LEWISOHN
A Settlement in Action
CHICAGO COMMONS THROUGH FORTY
YEARS, by Graham Taylor. Chicago Commons
Association. 322 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of
The Surrey.
nPHE outstanding fact about this no-
table addition to the autobiography
of Graham Taylor, towering at eighty-
six among the last survivors of the Old
Guard of original social settlement
workers in America, is that it is nearest
among the narratives of settlement his-
tory to being a first-hand notebook and
handbook of that kind of social-welfare
work. With all possible regard for the
books of Jane Addams, Lillian D. Wald
and others known to me, and with recog-
nition of their preeminent literary qual-
ity and excellence as sociological con-
tributions, this story surpasses them in
the presentation of the settlement in ac-
tion. However much it threads upon the
civic activities of Professor Taylor him-
self, in his neighborhood, in Chicago at
large, and in the broader territory of
state and nation, it nevertheless depicts
vividly, movingly, effectively, the work
of the group that he drew about him-
self. Incidentally he shows the thing
which, especially at the outset, was pe-
culiar in Chicago Commons; namely its
centering in the group of families, par-
ticularly his own, including a number of
children, at least one of them born dur-
ing the settlement residence of the pa-
rents, who made their normal home there
in one of the most densely crowded dis-
tricts of Chicago. Incidentally too he
shows how The Survey and Survey
Graphic had one — indeed the chief — of
their several sources in the little maga-
zine first published as the "house-organ"
of Chicago Commons. Every settlement
worker, everyone engaged or interested
in social-welfare activities of any kind,
must be familiar with this book, which I
foresee as coming to be required read-
ing for all students of social movements.
JOHN PALMER GAVIT
Essential Relationship
PATIENT AND DOCTOR, by Sir Henry Brack-
enbtiry. 280 pp. Price 5 shillings. Order direct
of publishers. Hodder and Stoughton, London,
England.
COME of us in earlier years of aca-
demic contemplation have absorbed
the principles of Le Contrat Sociale.
Sir Henry Brackenbury has given us a
medical contract, a philosophy of conduct
by which modern science can best serve
that unit of the social system who is also
a human personality and a biological or-
ganism. After a bit of trustworthy and
concentrated medical history, and a
clearing of the stage of today's social
outlook on the individual and collective
use of physicians, the reader is carried
through those relations between patient
and doctor, state and doctor, general
practitioner and public health and the
patient-doctor-hospital complex through
which the solution of pressing problems
of contemporary American life will be
achieved.
A better balanced story of England's
progress, her convictions, and the under-
lying essentials of medical service is no-
where to be found. Much is applicable
to the needs and errors and hopes of
any modern occidental society. There
is no false note or special pleading. High
purpose, honesty of thought, discrimi-
nating brevity in quotation from epoch
making reports, and classical expressions
of medical and social wisdom character-
ize the volume throughout.
Written more for the patient than for
his doctor, the volume should be required
reading in every medical school and
school of nursing. Much time and public
money and costly devotion of collabo-
rating brains in Washington would have
been saved if consideration of the medical
participation in social security had been
preceded by a reading of this book.
It should be of interest to those who
believe in the method of controlled so-
cial experiment as a safe way of learn-
ing the path to betterment that some
urban and rural communities of Michi-
gan are today applying the Brackenbury
philosophy with encouraging results for
patient, doctor, and public health.
New York HAVEN EMERSON, M.D.
For Russia's Children
NURSERY SCHOOL AND PARENT EDUCA-
TION IN SOVIET RUSSIA, by Vera Fediaev-
sky in collaboration with Patty Smith Hill.
Button. 265 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
r\ ESCRIBING education in Russia,
Miss Fediaevsky says "All forms
of education grow directly out of the
needs of the workers themselves." This
is well exemplified by the program which
she describes for the protection, health
and education of mothers during preg-
nancy, confinement and nursing, and of
children from birth through the third
year. The plan includes legislation, con-
sultation centers, creches, ' other nursery
organizations, and institutes of research.
The greatest contribution of this pro-
gram in Russia lies not so much in theory
or methods of education or social work
as in its new methods of social planning.
It was this that impressed me most when
I visited many of these welfare centers
MARCH 1937
91
with Vera Fediaevsky in 1929. And al-
though the book indicates the great
changes that have taken place in the
past seven years, they seem more along
the lines of extension and variation of
services than in development of theory
or method. One is impressed not only
by the completeness that characterizes
the program and its integration with the
total lives of the people but also by the
flexibility of organization that has de-
veloped to fit the work to the specific
needs of different communities.
One of the newer experiments is the
organization of nursery groups for
"walks" under the supervision of the
Consultation Center in cooperation with
the Lodging Association. Another is the
"sanatory nursery playground" for un-
dernourished or sickly children. The
rooms in railway stations and the special
coaches for mothers and children travel-
ing long distances are the first to be es-
tablished by any country.
Can all this be true? It sounds like a
fairy tale to one who has lived in a coun-
try which has left the welfare of mothers
and children largely to haphazard state
legislation and the whims and fortunes
of the rich.
I have seen Vera Fediaevsky, a woman
of the "older" generation in Russia, at
work giving of her wisdom and bound-
less energy to the new program for
young children; and it was an inspiring
sight. Her book should be a challenge
to Americans.
We are indebted to Professor Patty
Hill, the collaborating author, for the
encouragement and help extended to
Vera Fediaevsky to make this book pos-
sible. Lois HAYDEN MEEK
Child Development Institute
Teachers College, Columbia University
Discipline for Dollars
FAMILY FINANCE: A STUDY IN THE ECO-
NOMICS OF CONSUMPTION, by Howard F. Bige-
low. Lippincott. 519 pp. Price $3 postpaid of
The Survey,
TN her recent book, If I Have Four
Apples, Josephine Lawrence demon-
strated that family finance can furnish
the plot for a novel. Mr. Bigelow demon-
strates that it also furnishes issues
worthy of serious study, and provides a
guide for such efforts in the data assem-
bled and in his reasoned discussion.
There is danger that most people will
not know how good this book is, because
they will not know how trivial and
superficial is the usual treatment of the
topics discussed nor will they know from
their own experience how difficult it is
to grasp and to think through the issues
involved. Every page of this book shows
knowledge and intelligence and, equally
clearly, that the book did not go to the
printer until conclusions that would hang
together had been reached, until each
paragraph was definitely a part of an
organized whole and until each idea was
clearly expressed.
The book is divided into four parts:
a short Part One on the family's wants
and resources; a slightly longer Part
Two on the ways of making the most
of the resources — by wise purchase, by
home production, and by spending to-
gether; Part Three with a chapter each
on food, clothing, housing operation, the
automobile and the trio — health, educa-
tion and recreation; and Part Four on
the strategy of family finance — budget-
ing, provision for the future and so on.
The book hardly justifies its subtitle
"a study in the economics of consump-
tion." Rather, as stated in the preface,
it suggests "in considerable detail, meth-
ods and devices by which the individual
family may immediately go about im-
proving its way of living."
University of Chicago HAZEL KYRK
Practical Practice
RURAL HEALTH PRACTICE, by Harry S.
Mustard, M.D. Commonwealth Fund. 603 pp.
Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
tpVERY health officer who takes his
work seriously and desires to im-
prove it will find much of value in this
most comprehensive volume on public
health practice.
The author, by education, training and
broad experience, is well qualified to ad-
vise on the many problems which daily
confront health officers, especially those
who are making public health their life
work within large population groups.
Though Dr. Mustard modestly states
that his observations are directed largely
to rural districts and smaller cities, the
fundamental principles of public health
practice are not confined to any popula-
tion group or political division and dif-
fer only in detail in any part of the
world where organized effort is being
made to improve the health and welfare
of human beings.
Dr. Mustard has a deep knowledge
and apparent sympathy with the foibles
and prejudices of the various groups and
individuals with whom he has had to
deal in promoting plans for the more
efficient conduct of public health admin-
istration. He is a frank and practical op-
portunist, borrowing freely from the
methods of skilled propagandists and
even from practical politicians whose
aid, however grudgingly given, he would
not hesitate to ask in carrying out his
plans. His policy seems to be based on
the theory that "honey catches more
flies than vinegar," and that persuasion
is more desirable than threats and strong
arm methods, even under extreme provo-
cation.
The ever changing theories and meth-
ods of practice of public health work are
concisely and accurately discussed. The
author does not hesitate to criticize
routine methods, inherited and passed
from one health officer to another, obvi-
ously outmoded and of little value today,
though they satisfied a less critical age.
The chapters on setting up new health
organizations, especially county health
units, are masterpieces of thoroughness
and practicability. Those who are inter-
ested in this modern unit of public health
administration will save themselves a
great deal of time and trouble by taking
to heart Dr. Mustard's recommenda-
tions and advice on the difficulties which
are certain to be met not only by the
organizers, but by those who are to carry
on the work.
Public health nursing in its relation
to the other fields of public health is
admirably covered. The subject of vital
statistics, that bugbear of health officers
who have not had special training in the
subject, is treated in a simple and con-
vincing manner so that the general prin-
ciples should be understood by any health
officer with ordinary intelligence and a
reasonable knowledge of mathematics.
Dr. Mustard has made a noteworthy
contribution to the extensive and ever
growing literature of public health prac-
tice which may well serve as a guide to
all those who are interested in any or all
branches of public health.
MATTHIAS NICHOL, JR., M.D.
Commissioner of Health
Westchester County, N. Y.
Statistical Likeness
A HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL STATISTICS OF
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, compiled by
Thelma A. Dreis. Published for the Institute of
Human Relations, Yale University. Yale Uni-
versity Press. 146 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
' I ''HE data contained in the seventy
tables and seventeen maps of this
compilation are mainly by-products of
various studies of the New Haven popu-
lation made at the Institute of Human
Relations. Effective planning led to cor-
responding analyses of data in successive
studies and to consideration, in preparing
each new tabulation, of its usefulness for
subsequent inquiries. An increasingly use-
ful pool of social data has resulted,
available at once when new investigations
are undertaken by the Institute staff or
by others studying the New Haven scene.
A logical further step has been to publish
some of the tables, thus increasing their
availability and illustrating what might
advantageously be done elsewhere.
Each of the tables is explained in ac-
companying text. The variety of the ma-
terial is suggested by the sources from
which it is drawn. Naturally, much is
derived from census volumes, but census
data are also included which were spe-
cially tabulated for Institute studies.
Other sources of original data are the
local telephone and gas companies, board
of education, health department, juvenile
court, relief administration, registrar of
voters, city directory, and Who's Who.
Data compiled in a series of studies of
92
a scientifically selected sample of families
in the city also are included.
New Haven is one of fifty cities for
which the Bureau of the Census, with
the assistance of local groups, has al-
ready established permanent tracts for
small area tabulation of census data.
In New Haven the present thirty-three
ungerrymandered city wards constitute
these permanent census tracts and most
of the tables and all the diagrams of
the handbook present information sub-
divided by these areas. The appearance
of the handbook suggests that New
Haven may now lead among the census
tract cities in variety and accessibility of
small-area statistics, although for several
larger cities, collections of such statistics
have been published.
RALPH G. HURLIN
Russell Sage Foundation
New York
"Mixed Company"
PARTNERS IN PLAY, by Mary J. Breen. A S
Barnes. 185 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Sur-
vey.
TN spite of our modernity, association
between the sexes in recreation has
been left largely to the initiative, or lack
of it, of the young people themselves.
Co-education does not always mean co-
recreation and a normal, sensible social
life. Cigarette smoking and tippling by
young people is no sign that they are
better adjusted to school contacts than
the hobble-de-hoy boys and self-conscious
girls of the last generation. Partners
in Play is an apt title for an excellent
and, in some ways, a unique book on rec-
reation in what is often described as
"mixed company."
The book is written for recreation
leaders, but like all first class books of
this character also should be on the
bookshelf of every family where there
are children. There are chapters on
group games, dancing, hiking, camping
and sports for young people together,
but the book's contribution is its frank
and clear interpretation of what boys
and girls of 'teen age desire in friend-
ship and good times together. The dif-
ficult problems of leadership of mixed
groups of young men and young women
are gone into thoroughly and sanely.
It is the first recreation book I have
read with a section on such a topic as
"friendship, an essential of happy mar-
riage." It is very likely a sad truth as
stated there, that "one of the chief
reasons for divorce and desertion is
that husbands and wives have never
learned to play together." A book on
recreation that has that statement on
page 5 must have some good stuff further
on. And the reader will not be disap-
pointed. The vital necessity of knowing
how to play together as well as what to
play and do in recreational hours per-
vades the volume.
Stanton, N. J. CHARLES J. STOREY
In answering
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
Ready in March
How To INTERPRET SOCIAL WORK
By HELEN CODY BAKER and MARY SWAIN ROUTZAHN
gUBTITLED "A Study Course," this manual is designed for use at publicity
institutes in social work conferences, for special study classes in inter-
pretation, and for group study by social workers who need guidance in this
field. It covers in outline the whole field of interpretation, reinforcing its
statement of principles with many examples of publicity material photo-
graphically reproduced. ,j fl
RUSSELL
130 East 22d Street
SAGE FOUNDATION
New
A LAYMAN'S HANDBOOK OF MEDICINE
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SOCIAL WORKERS
By RICHARD C. CABOT
A new. revised edition of a sound, sane, and comprehensive work on the body
and its diseases, written by one of America's leading physicians, and full of
valuable advice on the best methods of keeping well. When it was first pub-
lished, one authority called it: "A remarkable book for the general reader, the
first thing of the kind to be done ... a new sort of family doctor book, full of
excellent material, reliable information, and intelligent suggestion." $2.50
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
For Social Workers
Ready in March
THE BIOLOGY OF HUMAN CONFLICT
By TRIGANT BURROW, M.D., Scientific Director, the Lifwynn
Foundation, New York.
This is a remarkable new theory as to the origin and the proper treatment of
menta disorders. It is based on the author's findings that the problem of man's
mental or behavior disorders is not to be met through curing the occasional
isolated individual who is "unable to make the grade." Tuberculosis raged un-
checked until society recognized the need to establish for itself an environment
that would make for physical health. This book shows the need for man to take
the same course in his effort to meet the problem of so-called nervous disorders
and it presents also the method called for in such a course. Probably $3.50.
OUR CHILDREN IN A CHANGING WORLD
An Outline of Practical Guidance
By ERWIN WEXBERG, M.D., Head of the Department of Neuropsy-
chiatry, Louisiana State University. With Henry E. Fritsch.
^•i1]"? ?rac.tical handbook the authors explain naturally and simply factors in
child behavior with which the teacher, the doctor, the social worker and the
parent have a wealth of experience in common. An interesting feature of the book
is the detailed discussion of children in industrial sections and to what thev are
exposed. Probably $2 50.
60 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
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WORKER WANTED
National organization, established, unique,
engaging, seeks field worker to expand mem-
bership in various cities. Should have back-
ground of acquaintance with social work and
movements and experience in raising money.
Address 7403 c/o Survey.
SITUATIONS WANTED
American Negro Ph.D. (Jan., 1937) University
of Dijon, France ; college teaching experience ;
wants directorship of boys* work or princi-
palship of an agricultural school in the
Americas or Africa. 7408 Survey.
College woman, experienced librarian, needs job
desperately. Cataloging private collections,
literary research, anything. 7416 Survey.
MATRON— DIETITIAN— 12 years' experience
wishes position Jewish Institution. Excellent
references. 7413 Survey.
Worker with long successful experience in settle-
ment boys work available June or September.
Keen understanding of boys. Highest refer-
ences. 7414 Survey.
CASEWORKER AND EXECUTIVE. Man, de-
sires position in delinquency or protective
work. Nine years social work, including case-
work with men and boys in welfare and pro-
bation fields. Also experience in community
organization and as business executive. Gradu-
ate Columbia University and New York School
Social Work. Member A. A. S. W. 7418
Survey.
Experienced corrective speech teacher, trained
in psychiatric approach, also experienced in
tutoring, desires position June, July, August.
7404 Survey.
SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
SEEMAN BROS., INC.
Groceries
Hudson and North Moore Streets
New York
Your Own Agency
This is the counseling and placement agency
sponsored jointly by the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers and the National
Organization for Public Health Nursing.
National, Non-profit making.
l/0<*t- ytrGaJtvnoJr C^fcx«4ru
(Agency)
122 East 22nd Street, 7th floor, New York
GERTRUDE R. STEIN, INC.
Vocational Service Agency
11 East 44th Street NEW TORE
MUrray Hill 2-4784
A professional employment bureau specializing
in social service, institutional, dietetic, medical,
publicity, advertising and secretarial positions.
PAMPHLETS AND PERIODICALS
The American Journal of Nursing shows the part
which professional nurses take in the better-
ment of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00
a year. 60 West 60 Street, New York, N. Y.
LITERARY SERVICE
Special articles, theses, speeches, papers. Re-
search, revision, bibliographies, etc. Over
twenty years' experience serving busy pro-
fessional persons. Prompt service extended.
AUTHORS RESEARCH BUREAU. 616
Fifth Avenue. New York, N. Y.
to EMPLOYERS
Who Are Planning to Increase Their Staffs
We Supply:
Executives Dietitians
Grad. Nuriel
Case Workers Housekeepers
Sec'y-Stenoji.
Recreation Workers Matrons
Stenographer!
Psychiatric Social Workers Housemothers
Bookkeepers
Typists
Occupational Therapists Teachers
Telephone Operatori
HOLMES EXECUTIVE
PERSONNEL
One East 42nd Street
New York City
Agency Tel.: Mil 2-7575 Gertrude
D. Holmei, Director
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THE ADDISON PRESS
12 E. 86th Street New York
AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS
By Harold Coe Coffman
President, George Williams College
"Invaluable," says the Red Cross Courier, "to
the organization executive interested in Founda-
tion assistance as well as to the social worker
concerned with child welfare projects.". .. .$3.00
ASSOCIATION PRESS
347 Madison Avenue New York, N. Y.
"COMPANY SICKNESS BENEFIT PLANS
FOR WAGE EARNERS"
What is being done in 72 companies to help re-
lieve wage earners of the burden of sickness.
72 pp. $1.50
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SECTION
Princeton University Princeton, N. J.
"ECONOMICS AND PEACE: A Primer and a
Program"
By Marc A. Rose
World Affairs Book Number 18, containing the
report submitted to the National Peace Confer-
ence by its Committee on Economics and Peace
signed by 34 distinguished economists. Order from
NATIONAL PEACE CONFERENCE
8 West 40th Street New York, N. Y.
In paper 3Sc; in colorful cloth binding, 7Sc.
"THE COTTON SOUTH AND AMERICAN
TRADE POLICY"
By Peter Molyneaux
World Affairs Book Number 17— a vital dis-
cussion of problems integrally related to our
national welfare.
In paper 35c; in cloth 75c.
Order from
NATIONAL PEACE CONFERENCE
8 West 40th Street New York, N. Y.
THE EUROPEAN CIVIL WAR
The First Twenty Years 1917-1936
By Scott Nearing
I. The Decline of the West
II. Marx, Lenin and the Workers' Revolution
III. Counter-Revolution
IV. The People's Front
V. The Outlook for Europe
Christian Social Justice Fund, Inc.
513 Park Avenue Baltimore, Md.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
DIVISION OF SOCIAL WORK
Graduate Professional Training and Senior College Pre-
Vocational Courses in preparation for Social Work in Public
Service and in Private Agencies.
Particular emphasis on the Training of Men for Work among
Delinquents and other types of Public Service.
Courses leading to the degrees of Bachelor and Master of
Science in Social Service and Doctor of Social Science.
Electives available in the University include over a hundred
and fifty credit hours on a graduate level which have vocational
value.
A d dress
84 Exeter Street
DIVISION OF SOCIAL WORK
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Boston
SCHOOL OF NURSING
OF YALE UNIVERSITY
A Profession for the College Woman
The thirty-two months' course, providing an intensive and
varied experience through the case study method, leads to the
degree of
MASTER OF NURSING
A Bachelor's degree in arts, science or philosophy from a
college of approved standing is required for admission.
For catalogue and information address:
The Dean, YALE SCHOOL OF NURSING
New Haven, Connecticut
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
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Changes in Governmental
Provisions for Relief and
Social Service
will require closer integration of effort be-
tween private and public social work agencies.
The knowledge and skills required are made
available in graduate curricula for profes-
sional social work leading to the Master's and
Doctor's degrees offered by
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
FOR JEWISH SOCIAL WORK
For information about require-
ments for admission, scholar-
ships and fellowships, write to
DR. M. J. KARPF, Director
The
Graduate
School
For
Jewish
Social Work
71 West 47th Street, New York City
CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Announces a two-year program of graduate work
leading to the degree of
M. S. in Social Work
in addition to the pre-professional undergraduate program
leading to the degree of
B. S. in Social Science
The graduate curriculum includes courses and field work
practice in Social Case Work, Group Work, Community
Organization, and Social Research.
Summer Session
June 14 — July 2
Short, intensive courses for case workers and supervisors
with previous training and experience, as well as for
college graduates entering upon a program of professional
study.
For information, address
MRS. MARY C. BURNETT
Head, Department of Social Work
Carnegie Institute of Technology
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
"I have just had the most
colorful and instructive 47
days of my life."
You'll certainly say this if
you join the EDUTRAVEL
group going over to Soviet
Russia on July 3rd. Inclu-
sive cost July 3rd to Augnit
18th $489.00. Earlier or later
sailings may be arranged if
you prefer to join the Semi-
nar abroad.
Members of the
SEMINAR ON SOCIAL WORK
IN THE SOVIET UNION
will meet with Soviet workers in various fields of social welfare
and participate in a well rounded program of observation and
discussion. Assistance will be given to those who wish to make
specialized investigations in their own fields.
The Seminar will be directed by WALTER WEST, Executive
Secretary of the American Association of Social Workers. A
competent business manager will be in charge of travel de-
tails (tickets, visas, baggage, etc.).
Tentative arrangements now being made.
For full details write for pamphlet "SM".
GDUTRAVGL, Inc.
An Institute for Educational Travel
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. N. Y.
Telephones: GRamercy 7-3284-3285
A Survey of
PUBLIC HEALTH
in the
SOVIET UNION
under leadership of
JOHN A. KINGSBURY
co-author of "Red Medicine"
For the first time a group of American public
health officers, physicians, nurses, and social
workers will make a study of Public Health under
the Soviets. A comprehensive program is being
elaborated in consultation with the Commissariat
of Public Health.
Sailing from New York July 10. Nine weeks of
travel. Rate with Tourist steamship passage and
comfortable travel abroad C*7O7
Membership limited. 9/ifi
THE OPEN ROAD
Russian Travel Division
8 West 40th Street New York
Cooperating with Intourist
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
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DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
Library Service
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 520
North Michigan Ave., Chicago. To aid in
the extension and improvement of library
•ervice.
Child Welfare
BOYS' CLUBS OF AMERICA, INC., 381 Fourth
Avenue, N.Y.C. National service organization
of 291 Boys' Clubs located in 153 cities. Fur-
nishes program aids, literature, and educa-
tional publicity for promotion of Boys' Club
Movement ; field service to groups or individ-
uals interested in leisure-time leadership for
boys, specializing with the underprivileged.
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA—
C. C. Carstens. director, 130 E. 22nd Street,
New York City. A league of children's agen-
cies and institutions to secure improved
standards and methods in their various fields
of work. It also co-operates with other chil-
dren's agencies, cities, states, churches, fra-
ternal orders and other civic groups to work
out worth-while results in phase of child
welfare in which they are interested.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSER-
IES— 130 East 22nd Street, New York City.
To federate day nurseries in the U. S. and
assist them to establish and maintain ap-
proved standards of care.
Community Chests
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS, INC.
— 155 East 44th Street, New York. Informa-
tion and consultation about cooperative plan-
ning and financing of social work through
chests and councils of social agencies.
Foundations
AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND,
INC.— 15 West 16th Street, New York. A
national organization for research and field
service. Activities include : assistance to state
and local agencies in organizing activities
and promoting legislation ; research in legis-
lation, vocations, statistics, and mechanical
appliances for the blind : maintenance of a
reference lending library. H. C. Higel, Presi-
dent ; Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION— For the Im-
provement of Living Conditions — Shelby M.
Harrison, Director; 130 E. 22nd St., New
York. Departments: Charity Organization,
Delinquency and Penology, Industrial Stu-
dies, Library, Recreation, Remedial Loans,
Social Work Interpretation, Social Work
Year Book, Statistics, Surveys. The publica-
tions of the Russell Sage Foundation offer
to the public in practical and inexpensive
form some of the most important results of
its work. Catalogue sent upon request.
Industrial Democracy
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY—
Promotes a better understanding of problems
of democracy in industry through iu
pamphlet, research and lecture services and
organization of college and city groups. Ex-
ecutive Directors, Harry W. Laidler and
Norman Thomas, 112 East 19th Street, New
York City.
Racial Adjustment
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., with its
44 branches improves social conditions of
Negroes seeking "not alms, but opportunity"
for them. Secures and trains social workers.
Investigates conditions of city life as bases
for practical work. Publishes OPPOR-
TUNITY, Journal of Negro Life. Solicits
gifts. 1133 Broadway, New York, N. Y.
Health
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL
HYGIENE, INC.— Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles,
president ; Dr. C. M. Hincks, general direc-
tor ; Clifford W. Beers, secretary; 60 West
60th Street, New York City. Pamphlets on
mental hygiene, child guidance, mental
disease, mental defect, psychiatric social
work and other related topics. Catalogue of
publications sent on request. "Mental Hy-
giene," quarterly, $3.00 a year.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR PUBLIC
HEALTH NURSING— 50 W. 60th St., New
York. Dorothy Deming, R. N., Gen. Dir.
Advisory service, statistics, monthly maga-
zine.
NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION—
60 West 60th Street, New York, Dr. Kendall
Emerson, managing director. Pamphlets of
methods and program for the prevention of
tuberculosis. Publications sold and distributed
through state associations in every state.
American Review of Tuberculosis, medical
journal, $8.00 a year ; and Monthly Bulletin,
house organ, free.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE— A
Clearing House, cooperating with social work-
ers in referring hidigent mothers to medically
directed birth control clinics in 41 states, in-
cluding 17 centers in Greater New York. In
areas lacking* centers, qualified physicians are
available. Phone or write: 615 Madison
Avenue, New York City. WIckersham 2-8600.
President : Clarence Cook Little. Medical
Director: Eric M. Matsner, M.D.
New York City
THE BIRTH CONTROL CLINICAL RESEARCH
BUREAU, 17 West 16th Street; MARGARET
SANGER, Director; has added evening ses-
sions, Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
from 7 to 9 P.M., for the benefit of mothers
who work and cannot come to the Clinic
daily from 9 to 4.
National Conferences
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL
WORK — Edith Abbott, President, Chicago ;
Howard R. Knight, Secretary, 82 N. High
St., Columbus, O. The Conference is an
organization to discuss the principles of
humanitarian effort and to increase the
efficiency of social service agencies. Each
year it holds an annual meeting, publishes
in permanent form the Proceedings of the
meeting, and issues a quarterly Bulletin.
The sixty-fourth annual convention of the
Conference will be held in Indianapolis, Ind.,
May 23-29, 1937. Proceedings are sent free
of charge to all members upon payment of
a membership fee of $5.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH
SOCIAL WELFARE— Harry L. Glucksman,
President ; M. W. Beckelman, Secretary, 67
W. 47th St., New York, N. Y. Organized
to discuss Jewish life and welfare, Jewish
social service programs and programs of
social and economic welfare. The 1937
Annual Meeting will be held in Indianapolis,
Ind., May 20-23. The Conference publishes
a magazine, Jewish Social Service Quarterly,
a news bulletin, Jewish Conference, and Pro-
ceedings of its Annual Conference. Minimum
Annual Membership Fee $2.
Vocational Counsel and Placement
JOINT VOCATIONAL SERVICE, INC.— Offer*
vocational information, counsel, and place-
ment in social work and public health nurs-
ing. Non-profit making. Sponsored as na-
tional, authorized agency for these fields by
American Association of Social Workers and
National Organization for Public Health
Nuninc, 122 E. 22nd St. New York City.
Religious Organizations
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS
—105 East 22nd Street, New York City.
The Inter-Denominational body of 23 wo-
men's home missions boards of the United
States and Canada uniting in program and
financial responsibility for enterprises which
they agree to carry cooperatively, such as
Christian social service in Migrant labor
camps, and Christian character building
programs in Indian American government
schools.
President, Mrs. Millard L. Robinson
Executive Secy., Edith E. Lowry
Associate Secy., Charlotte M. Burnham
Western Field Secy., Adela J. Ballard
Migrant Supervisor, Gulf to Great Lakes
Area, Mrs. Kenneth D. Miller
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN,
INC. — 221 West 57th Street, 9th floor. New
York City. Mrs. Arthur Brin, President ;
Mrs. Maurice L. Goldman, Chairman Ex.
Com. ; Mrs. Marion M. Miller, Executive Di-
rector. Organization of Jewish women initi-
ating and developing programs and activities
in service for foreign born, peace, social
legislation, adult Jewish education, and so-
cial welfare. Conducts bureau of interna-
tional service. Serves as clearing bureau for
local affiliated groups throughout the coun-
try.
NATIONAL BOARD, YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATIONS, 600 Lexington Ave.,
New York City. An international Christian
woman movement devoted to service for
women and girls and the attempt to help
build a society in which the abundant life
is possible for every individual.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTION ASSOCIATIONS— 347 Madison
Avenue, New York City. Eskil C. Carlson,
President; John E. Manley, General Secre-
tary. A federation of 1123 local associations,
through state and area councils, for Chris-
tian character education among youth. Meets
annually to determine service projects and
budget for cooperation with local member
organizations in program emphasis and in-
terpretation, fiscal operations, etc. Empha-
sizes lay-professional cooperation, group and
club activity, and self-governing programs
of physical, social and religious education,
public affairs, international education and
special cooperative projects, citizenship, etc.
Specialized work among transportation, army
and navy, student, colored, rural, and certain
other groups.
Penology
THE OSBORNE ASSOCIATION, INC., 114 East
30th Street, New York, N. Y. Telephone
CAledonia 5-9720-9721. Activities :— Collects
information about penal institutions and
works to improve standards of care in penal
institutions. Aids discharged prisoners in
their problems of readjustment by securing
employment and giving such other assistance
as they may require. Wm. B. Cox, Executive
Secretary.
Recreation
NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION—
316 Fourth Ave., New York City. To bring
to every boy and girl and citizen of America
an adequate opportunity for wholesome,
happy play and recreation.
Is your
organization
listed in
the Survey's
Directory of
Social Agencies?
If not —
why not?
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
96
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office:
762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Editorial Office:
112 East 19 Street, New York
To which all communications should be sent
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGC, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIPPLE, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRIGO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
APRIL 1937
CONTENTS VOL. LXXIII No. 4
Frontispiece 98
1936 — Relief in New Jersey — 1937 DOUGLAS H. MACNEIL 99
Salute to the Children's Bureau 101
Case Work and Group Work
1 — Where two areas of social work meet and how they contribute
to each other GRACE L. COYLE 102
Social Security for Social Workers KATHRYN CLOSE 104
Miss Bailey Says . . .
"So We Told 'em Plain Facts" GERTRUDE SPRINGER 106
Behavior As It Is Behaved — VI
The Pashkas Eat Breakfast ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 108
Our Illegible Friends 109
The Common Welfare 110
The Social Front 112
Jobs and Workers • Public Welfare • Relief • The Insur-
ances • WPA • Young Volunteers • Library News • Child
Welfare • Against Tuberculosis • The Public's Health
• Professional • People and Things
Book Reviews : 121
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• A nation that tolerates child labor must ex-
pect to have child crime — AUSTIN H. MAC-
CORMICK, commissioner of correction, New
York City.
• Social service is not charity but self de-
fense. It has taken a long while for experts
to arrive at this idea. — MOSES STRAUSS, man-
aging editor, Cincinnati Times-Star.
• The best thing that America can do for
its farm youth is to train them to farm, help
them to own and teach them to conserve
America's greatest heritage, its soil. — HOMER
PAUL ANDERSEN, Utah farm boy, at New
York's Town Hall.
• In human society primitive self-interest
and arbitrary power seem to defeat social-
minded reasonableness. Yet the social value
of reasonableness is so great that it plays a
steadily increasing part in human affairs. —
ARTHUR E. MORGAN in Antioch Notes.
• Perhaps one percent of the "profoundest
convictions" of the ordinary man is motiv-
ated by adequate information, close reason-
ing and logic; the other 99 percent are a mere
reflection of his economic and social status. —
JEAN RICOCHET BOYD in The Forum.
• It is not possible to separate the stability
of industry from the security of its workers.
. . . Where industries are chaotic and disor-
ganized the wage earners take up the shock
of a brutal competitive system. — JOHN G.
WINANT, former chairman, Social Security
Board.
So They Say
• There is no static definition of what it
means to be a social worker. — FRANK KING-
DON, president, Newark University, N. J.
• Men are not always as good as the causes
they lead. You do not necessarily damn a
government when you debunk its leader.- —
GLENN FRANK.
• The average youth of sixteen, thanks to
our pretentious but slipshod methods of edu-
cation, can neither read intelligently, write
correctly nor think clearly. — I. A. R. WYLIE
in Harpers Magazine.
• The most subtle type of revolution which
confronts American democracy today is that
which is easily and silently possible through
taxation. — NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, presi-
dent, Columbia University.
• The day when private charities are to be
depended on to carry along those who can't
find employment, is gone. From now on those
with jobs are going to care for those without
them through the tax route. — HARRY L. HOP-
KINS, WPA Administrator.
• At no time since English became a fully
modern language with dictionaries and codi-
fiable standards of usage, has there been so
high a percentage of slovenliness, laxity and
downright anarchy in the public use. — WIL-
SON FOLLETT in Atlantic Monthly.
» Beyond sufficient incomes what can you
do with more money except give it to the
government? — SYLVIA SIDNEY, motion picture
actress.
• In any epic contest, like your Civil War.
both sides are right or the war would not go
on. — STEPHEN LEACOCK, McCill University.
.Montreal, to Amherst College Alumni Coun-
cil.
• After all we northern ministers are as
deeply involved in the sins of a cruel in-
dustrialism as are our southern brethren in
the sins of a racial feudalism. — The REV.
RHEINHOLD NIEBUHR in The Christian Cent-
ury.
• The guiding of social change is a concept
that attracts. Most of us want to be in on the
guiding [which is] merely social reform in
a new dress. — WAYNE McMiLLEN, University
of Chicago, to American Association of Social
Workers.
• Happily much has been done toward the
cure of mental disorders in individuals, but
so far we have no protection against collect-
ive lunacies which are far more terrifying in
their results. — The REV. JOSEPH FORT NEW-
TON, Philadelphia,
• Is it now apparent . . . that modern man
is selling his biological birthright for a mess of
morons; that the voice may be the voice of
democracy; but the hands are the hands of
apes? — EARNEST A. HOOTON, professor of
anthropology, Harvard University.
These murals painted by George Kiddie for the main hall of the new
Department of Justice Building in Washington would be equally appropri-
ate in the Children's Bureau. Now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary
the bureau through these years has promoted the welfare of children at
home and at work, in institutions, in courts — wherever children are. In
1912 when it first came into existence, the sweatshop with its child workers
of the mural above was still common. Like the artist in his second mural
the bureau looks ahead to the time when all children will have their chance
to be healthy, happy and sound.
THE SURVEY
APRIL 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 4
1936 — Relief in New Jersey — 1937
By DOUGLAS H. MAcNEIL
NOW, in April 1937, a year has passed since New
Jersey's relief crisis, since the legislative deadlock
over funds, the charge that abandonment of state
relief would put New Jersey back in the middle ages, the
counter-charge that the state relief administration was try-
ing to prolong its own life in order to save jobs for its
workers. There was excitement, recrimination and prophesy
of disaster but no one could tell wherein lay the truth.
What really did happen in New Jersey ? How good or
how bad is relief in New Jersey today?
On April 16, 1936, the New Jersey Emergency Relief
Administration, unable to conduct a relief program on a
month to month dole of funds from the legislature, with-
drew from the "businesss of relief." Before doing so it
satisfied itself that no real hardship need result. Due to
WPA and improved business, the number of families re-
ceiving emergency relief in March 1936 was half the num-
ber on ERA work and relief rolls in March 1935, and
was falling rapidly. Most large municipalities and many
smaller ones could finance a full relief program, temporarily
at least, however reluctant they might be to do so. Where
municipal finances were in bad shape, it was believed that
indirect arrangements might be made by which distress
would be avoided. The chief fear was that certain municipal-
ities would revert to the poor relief tradition under which
only the hopelessly destitute qualify for aid. But if muni-
cipal officials kept their heads and observed the spirit of New
Jersey's liberal poor relief statute, no calamity, the ERA
believed, need follow the cessation of state relief.
But this was "inside" reasoning. Not knowing the par-
ticulars the public looked for the worst, for starvation,
mass evictions, riots. When only isolated cases of extreme
suffering were found, the public began to feel that the relief
crisis had been exaggerated. This coincided with the hopes
of the taxpayers. Although a sit-down demonstration in the
state capitol by the Workers' Alliance gained national
publicity, there were few defenders of the ERA while even
fewer persons were ready to think about long range plan-
ning for future public assistance.
The legislature therefore abolished the ERA and passed
a statute leaving the administration of relief with the muni-
cipalities, but creating a new agency, the Financial Assist-
ance Commission, to disburse state grants-in-aid to help
municipalities finance any relief costs over and above a stated
millage in the local real property tax rate. However, no
funds were appropriated to this agency until a long-litigated
inheritance tax case was settled in the state's favor and the
proceeds, $6 million, was placed at the disposal of the com-
mission.
This appropriation enabled the commission to meet by
far the major part of municipal relief costs in the last
half of 1936. But as the commission's practice is to wait
until the municipalities' monthly relief expenditures have
been audited, then to reimburse for expenditures in excess of
a municipal share fixed according to a mathematical for-
mula, definite figures are not yet available as to the costs
to the municipalities and the state. The commission esti-
mated that the total relief expenditures in the last six
months of 1936, exclusive of administration, amounted to
approximately $6,700,000, of which the state will provide
$6 million. The municipalities will provide $700,000 plus
administrative expenses of about as much again, or $1,-
400,000 in all. As this is written, the legislature once more
is deadlocked over methods for financing state relief aid in
1937.
"OUMORS that municipal relief officials were more suc-
•*• *• cessful in cutting down case loads than their ERA
predecessors are not substantiated by a recent estimate by a
national research committee studying relief in New Jersey.
This estimate, comparing the total number of cases aided
by direct, work and categorical relief monthly in 1935 and
1936, is as follows:
CASES UNDER CARE
1935 1936
January 187,750 190,000
February 190,000 190,000
March 187,750 190,000
April 184,000 178,750
May 174,000 163,000
June 167,000 152,500
July 167,000 146,500
August 163,500 143,750
September 159,500 147,750
October 162,000 150,786
November 177,000 151,500
December 182,500 166,000
99
These figures suggest that relief trends in New Jersey,
despite all the excitement and furore which accompanied
last spring's crisis, have followed a course consistent with
improving business conditions. It is doubtful whether the
reduction is appreciably greater than in neighboring
states where there was no comparable administrative up-
heaval.
But what of actual relief practices in New Jersey since
the ERA went out of business? Who is now eligible for
aid ? How is eligibility established and maintained ? How
adequate are relief allowances and personnel standards? No
general answer can be made to these questions for the
state as a whole. In most of the larger cities — Newark,
Jersey City, Trenton, Elizabeth, to name a few — relatively
little change from ERA may be observed. The same gen-
eral methods of establishing eligibility and case supervision
have been maintained. Scales of relief allowances and costs
remain more or less comparable with ERA, although some
upward adjustments have been made to meet rising food
prices. A few smaller municipalities are experimenting with
cash relief. The morale of the workers in some city relief
offices seems better than under ERA. On the other hand,
there are various increasingly disturbing features. Certain
urban relief agencies have limited the vendors eligible to fill
relief orders in such a way as to lead to rumors of favorit-
ism or worse. A local residence requirement has forced out
many qualified workers who have been replaced by persons
about whose qualifications judgment must be reserved.
Much criticism has also come from the medical profession
and from others, over the return to the city doctor system
in most of the large centers.
IN a group of smaller cities, Montclair, Irvington, Perth
Amboy, Princeton, Lakewood, Westfield, the ERA
policies have been retained intact and in addition a cam-
paign of interpretation has gained a popular sanction for
them that was lacking when the ERA was operating. Perth
Amboy offers a fair example. At the low point of the de-
pression almost a quarter of its 45,000 residents was on
relief. Its financial status was precarious. Although in
March 1936, WPA had cut relief rolls to 841 cases
(2650 persons), the danger implicit in the discontinuance
of ERA was acute. But Perth Amboy, under the leader-
ship of a courageous young mayor, met the crisis standing
up. With the backing of the local chapter of the American
Red Cross, by whom the salary of the ERA case supervisor
had been paid, the mayor called in a group of leading citi-
zens— two industrialists, the editor of the newspaper, repre-
sentatives of mercantile interests, the medical profession,
private social and health agencies, and organized women's
activities as well as of the financial and legal branches of
the city government. This group the mayor organized into
a Board of Public Assistance and in spite of pressure to
make a patronage appointment, named the ERA case super-
visor as municipal relief director. The Red Cross agreed to
continue paying her salary. The Board of Public Assistance
reviewed the policies inherited from ERA, found them
sound, and sponsored them in the community. The result,
in terms of changing relief practices, has been very slight,
but the community has faith in its relief program, and
Perth Amboy citizens actively defend it when neighboring
towns claim to be doing the relief job for less money and
without benefit of social workers.
In many rural sections and in a few industrial communi-
ties, the fear has been realized that abandonment of the
ERA program would cause a return to the worst features
of traditional poor law administration. How this tradition
operates is illustrated by an excerpt from the report of a
recent survey interview with a typical rural overseer of the
poor.
This overseer is more than seventy years of age. He has held
the office on a part time basis for many years. His salary is
nominal. He is querulous but not wilfully unkind. He is ter-
ribly fussed about paper work: "Slips for WPA jobs, slips to
get boys into CCC camps, slips to get government foods, all
kinds of slips. All day long I sign slips. Can't the government
run anything without slips?" He can't help anybody who hasn't
lived in the township for the last five years. "The law don't
let me," he says. Nor will he help any one who is working,
regardless of how inadequate the income may be. 'Can't help
nobody who has a job. No. And I can't help anybody who turns
down a job." No records are kept except the relief order stub.
(He has a book of relief orders something like a check book.)
The only help he gives, except "slips" for WPA commodities,
is food relief. All orders are given out weekly and all are for
$3. "I have to treat "em fair. I can't give one fellow $2 and
another $5. 'Tain't my fault if some of "em have a lot of kids."
FROM files of this survey come examples of two differ-
ent concepts of racial discrimination. In a small in-
dustrial city the overseer grants Negroes a slightly smaller
allowance than he does whites. "Negroes are fitted by
nature," he says, "to subsist on coarser fare than whites."
Not ten miles away, in a semi-rural township, the overseer
of the poor says, "Six Eyetalians will live like kings for
two weeks if you send in twenty pounds of spaghetti, six
cans of tomato paste and a dozen loaves of three-foot-long
bread. But give them a food order like this [$13.50, state
minimum for six persons for half a month], and they will
still live like kings and put five bucks in the bank. Now you
ought to give a colored boy more. He likes his pork chops
and half a fried chicken. Needs them, too, to keep up his
strength. Let him have a chicken now and then and maybe
he'll go out and find himself a job. But a good meal of
meat would kill an Eyetalian on account of he ain't used to
it."
The trend since the abandonment of ERA perhaps may
best be illustrated by figures showng the range of monthly
costs per case under ERA and under municipal auspices:
ERA FAC
December December
1935 1936
NUMBER OF MUNICIPALITIES REPORTING 452 368
NUMBER WHOSE AVERAGE MONTHLY COST
PER CASE is :
Less than $10.00 11 48
$10.00 • 14.99 53 82
15.00 — 19.99 159 84
20.00 — 24.99 139 87
25.00 — 29.99 76 37
30.00 and more 14 30
MEDIAN $20.11 $18.21
From this it will be seen that the average monthly relief
costs under ERA, and presumably, therefore, the actual fam-
ily relief allowances, were much less standardized through-
out the state than has been assumed. Nonetheless, since the
abandonment of ERA, the spread has increased. Although a
greater number of municipalities appear in the topmost
bracket, the number in the lowest bracket has increased
even more conspicuously and the median definitely tells
the story that the trend is downward. It is only fair to
100
THE SURVEY
add that the Financial Assistance Commission is watchful
to avert flagrant local cuts in relief standards, else the gen-
eral level might be lower.
All this will suggest that the state of relief in New Jer-
sey might be worse but that it ought to be better. What is
being done to make it so? Little enough, in all conscience.
The whole question is bound inextricably with a host of
factors, reorganization of the structure of government, tax
reform, municipal home rule and economy on the positive
side ; and on the negative, factional politics, expediency and
public lethargy, which make it difficult to get a clear cut
division of opinion on what the state's relief program should
include. However, any return to the ERA basis, with its
often cumbersome, centralized procedures, would be gen-
erally opposed.
But here and there articulate groups are striving to or-
ganize public opinion toward a recognition of the need for
thorough revision of the relief set-up, with closer coordina-
tion between general and categorical relief agencies. In De-
cember 1936, the New Jersey State Conference of Social
Work in its "town meeting" session, discussed and voted to
support a report submitted by its Committee on Relief
Practices. The committee's proposals resemble the Maryland
and Louisiana public assistance laws and the proposals
made to Governor Earle by the Pennsylvania Committee
on Public Assistance and Relief. They are, in brief:
Expansion of the federal social security program to include
federal grants-in-aid for general as well as categorical relief,
provided that minimum standards of relief eligibility, ade-
quacy of relief allowances and of personnel are maintained.
Inclusion within an existing state department of authority
to coordinate general and categorical relief and services over
a wider area than the municipality.
Establishment of county welfare boards to administer gen-
eral and categorical relief in the localities, with the proviso
that municipalities of ten thousand or more population be
given the option of retaining general relief functions now in
their hands.
Almost all factual evidence available tends to support the
validity of these proposals. But much potential opposition
exists. Somewhat similar proposals were badly beaten in
county referenda in 1931. Those who claim that municipal
relief is traditional and implicit in American democracy
will fight from an emotional opposition to change. This
group overlaps the group that sees in any proposal to equal-
ize or liberalize relief processes only an increase in taxation.
There is another group, well-informed thinking citizens,
who hold that the theory of municipal relief is all right,
but that New Jersey's present division into municipalities
is a crazy quilt, a monument to gerrymandering and local
jealousies to which efficient government and equitable taxa-
tion are the first sacrifices. This group would let the relief
laws alone and would reconstitute municipal boundaries to
form real community lines.
In 1835, Thomas Gordon published his Gazeteer of New
Jersey. Concerning poor relief in the state, he said, "The
wisdom of these methods is less than equivocal, but it defies
the genius of legislation to create a better." Mr. Gordon,
there is every reason to believe that you are still right.
Salute to the Children's Bureau
SPONSORED by a distinguished group of social work-
ers and citizens, a dinner was given at the Hotel
Mayflower in Washington on April 8 in honor of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the Children's Bureau of the
United States Department of Labor.
This is the twenty-fifth year of Survey Associates; our
own anniversary comes next November. As setting for our
hopes and good wishes for the bureau in the years ahead,
here is reprinted, in part, the paragraphs which led off The
Survey of November 16, 1912 — one of the first issues
brought out under the aegis of our new cooperative society.
All the more warmly because this past month saw the cele-
bration of Miss Wald's seventieth birthday — founder of
the Henry Street Settlement, member of the board of Sur-
vey Associates throughout the quarter century, and origi-
nator of the conception of a federal bureau for children:
"JThe head of a bureau of the federal government is
called 'chief.' It has become a uniform custom among gov-
ernment employes, when writing to such an officer, to ad-
dress him as 'Dear Mr. Chief.' Consequently, official Wash-
ington was thrown into consternation at the announcement
that Julia C. Lathrop had been placed in charge of the new
children's bureau; for there seemed no escape from the
salutation, 'Dear Miss Chief.'
"That mischief is not to enter into the plans of the bur-
eau is made clear, however, in its first official bulletin, just
issued. Though the legislative, executive and judicial appro-
priation bill, granting funds to the bureau, did not pass
until the latter part of August, the bulletin presents an
impressive statement of things which will be done first, ad-
mitting that the program thus mapped out is a mere begin-
ning. . . . Credit for the first suggestion that a children's
bureau be established is given to Lillian D. Wald, head of
the Nurses' Settlement, New York.
"The immediate work of the bureau, as outlined, falls
into two classes: bringing together existing material within
its scope and making original investigations. . . .
"In the field of original investigation one of the first
things the bureau plans is to study infant mortality. Not
only is there declared to be urgent social need of a fuller
knowledge of conditions, but such knowledge is fundamen-
tal to the later work of the bureau. The field of inquiry
will be confined for the present to a few comparatively small
communities. On this point the bulletin continues:
" 'Because the importance of adequate birth registration
in reducing infant mortality is universally recognized, the
bureau will cooperate with the organizations, governmental
and volunteer, now working for registration in this country.
The New England states, Pennsylvania and Michigan were
in 1910 the only states included by the Census Bureau in
the registration area for births as having laws for birth
registration so enforced as to give reasonably satisfactory
results. . . . Unless there can be secured reliable knowledge
as to children born, there can be no reliable knowledge as to
the birthrate, nor as to the proportion of those who die.' . . .
"In carrying out what it regards as the intent of the law
creating it the bureau will become a clearing house for
information regarding passed or pending state legislation
affecting children. . . ." — P.K.
APRIL 1937
101
Case Work and Group Work
I — Where two social work areas meet and how they contribute to each other
By GRACE L. COYLE
Associate Professor, School of Applied Social Sciences, (Western Reserve University
SOCIAL work, in the normal course of growth from
its early undifferentiated form, has developed so much
specialization and social workers have acquired so
varied a collection of techniques that anyone who would
"speak our language" must possess the gift of tongues. Such
differentiation and specialization is likely to lead to separate-
ness and often to mutual recrimination. The sense of su-
periority is very comforting to us all. Our own problems we
know are more urgent than those of others, our techniques
are more scientific, our understanding more basic. We social
workers are in a way to becoming ourselves a social prob-
lem unless we can coordinate our specialties in a spirit of
mutual understanding and respect to the end of better ser-
vice to the community.
As a group worker, with a great concern for social ac-
tion especially in the field of industrial problems, I have
been concerned increasingly with the better integration of
all phases of social work. The relation of case work and
group work is one which needs both intelligent analysis and
cooperative action. What contribution have these two fields
to make to each other? What are the points of difference
in their basic concepts? Case workers and group workers
often deal with the same individuals; usually with the
same types. How do their two approaches fit together?
There are, I believe, several definite points at which
case workers may contribute to the development of group
work of better quality. Their practice is rooted in apprecia-
tion of the individual and a sensitive awareness of his needs.
The group worker usually works with people on a more
impersonal level. The group as a group must be his major
concern. He cannot single out individuals within the group
for special attention or subordinate the good of all to the
special needs of one. These necessities are liable to make
him relatively unaware of individuals except those who
stand out, either as leaders or as problems. I believe that
contact with case work thinking can do much to correct this
tendency in the group worker and can make him sensitive
to the symptoms of personal need or personal maladjustment
as they show themselves in group behavior.
Group behavior, just because it is the spontaneous reaction
of people in their own setting and among their peers, pro-
vides an eminently realistic approach to the understanding
of individuals. If the group worker can acquire the elements
of that understanding he can use the group experience to
assist individuals to opportunities for individual help where
they are needed, and can gauge better the real significance
of the behavior he observes. I do not mean that group work-
ers can or should become fully equipped case workers.
Theirs is another function. But they can with the help of
some of the elements of case work develop sensitiveness to
the individual which will make their observations sounder
and their methods of handling individual problems wiser.
The second point at which I believe the case work field
may contribute to group work is in the better understanding
of the importance of family relationships and of the early
life of the child. The group worker, like the school teacher,
deals with individuals away from home and usually among
those of their own age and kind. Occasionally, a brother
or sister will appear in the same group but usually individ-
uals function without any obvious family contacts. This is
characteristic of course of our impersonal, urban life. All
unknowingly the group worker may be contributing to
family conflict, weakening the tie between a child and its
foreign-born mother, substituting group activities for court-
ship interests during late adolescence, or in some other way
treating the individual in isolation from the dominant fact
of his family life. The emphasis on the family, so basic to
case work, can serve therefore as a healthy corrective in
group work agencies, especially those not organized on a
neighborhood basis, and can help group workers to fit ac-
tivities more constructively into the total pattern of the
individual's life.
A third contribution which I can see coming from case
work, especially in its psychiatric aspects, is a greater reali-
zation of the therapeutic possibilities of group experience.
Group workers have tended to deal with fairly well adjusted
individuals and to concern themselves with education and
the enhancement of life. Case workers deal more with those
who need treatment before they are ready to take part in
normal social activities. Therapy and education differ merely
in their place on the scale of individual growth. A better
acquaintance with case work will reveal, I believe, therapeu-
tic possibilities in group experience under certain controlled
conditions. Various experiments in institutions, hospitals,
and case work agencies are making group workers increas-
ingly aware of these possibilities.
FINALLY, comes the technical matter of record keeping
in which I think the group work field can gain ex-
tensively from case work. Group workers have a growing
interest in both group and individual records but the meth-
ods are fairly new and there is little general conviction of
their importance when it comes to providing the necessary
staff time or stenographic service. Until we get more ade-
quate records, we cannot proceed much farther toward im-
proving our methods of dealing with individual or group.
On the other hand the group worker has a contribution
to make to case work. One of the most important, I believe,
is to enhance the case worker's understanding of the place
and function of group life outside the family — both in its
relation to individual development and in its function in
society. Last winter I read a case record of a family living
in a crowded city environment. It dealt fully and adequately
with the relation of father and mother, of each of them
with the children, and of the children with each other.
But there was not a single reference to the group relations
of those children or of the parents. They might have been
the Swiss Family Robinson. The gang life of the twelve-
year-old boy, the club life of the fifteen-year-old girl, the
possible union affiliation of the father, the interests of the
102
THE SURVEY
mother in the Sodality, were never mentioned. I am not
suggesting that this narrow vision is a universal failing
among case workers, but it is perhaps inevitable that absorp-
tion in the family should obscure somewhat the other rela-
tionships playing on the life of the individual.
As soon as the child goes to school his group life, organ-
ized and unorganized, becomes a dominant factor in his
growth. It is true he may be working out in his club or his
gang earlier patterns toward authority, established habits of
hostility or affection, but as he finds opportunity to do that
outside the home, in groups of his peers, his earlier experience
will be modified and directed. Group pressures, group stand-
ards, the hold of the group leader, the search for congenial
companionship, all become increasingly important as the
child grows into the com-
munity. It is the function
of group workers to at-
tempt to domesticate these
social processes and control
them for educational ends.
They may well contribute
to the case worker a deeper
understanding of the func-
tions of organized relation-
ships of this kind and of
their potential value in the
group of individuals.
A closely related contri-
bution which I believe the
group worker can make is
to stimulate an increased interest in education and the
enrichment of life, and perhaps also a better understanding
of how education comes about. As I said earlier the concern
of the case worker is inevitably with therapy but as treat-
ment succeeds, the client becomes ready for education.
It has been said that the function of the case worker is
helping people out of trouble. But it is not enough merely to
be out of trouble. Important as that is, society must provide
for its members opportunity for all kinds of experience that
widens interest, develops latent capacities, increases knowl-
edge of the world, encourages creative expression, brings
forth intelligent, socially valuable human beings. The use
of leisure for these purposes is one of the functions of the
group worker. Group work's contribution to case work,
therefore, is, I believe, complementary. Its emphasis on the
enhancement and enrichment of life through educative ex-
perience may bring to greater fruition the necessarily thera-
peutic functions of the case worker. The skilled group
worker attempts to use in this process those educational
methods which reduce authoritative control to a minimum
and which develop activities out of the interest of the group
into channels of personal enrichment and social usefulness.
There is, I believe, a great deal in common between the
best methods and purposes of modern case work and the edu-
cational procedure of skilled group work in this encourage-
ment of self-determination. The group worker is simply
carrying on the process in the area of recreational and edu-
cational interests and within a group setting.
However, the contribution of the group worker is not
limited to the point of the developmental effect on the in-
dividual of directed group experience. We are living in a
period of intensive collective life. Our communities are
highly organized, pressure groups are everywhere, par-
ticipation in group life of all kinds is the new form of
citizenship. Every individual exists in a network of group
"Case work" said Miss Coyle in an earlier article in The
Survey, (May 1935) "deals with individuals in a one-to-
one relationship. . . . Group work relies for its effect upon
the interaction of a face-to-face group of people bound
together by a common interest." This discussion of how
the two may be integrated to the enrichment of their ser-
vices, will be continued in next month's issue of The Sur-
vey where Miss Coyle will discuss Social Workers and
Social Action. Both articles have been drawn from a paper
presented to the Illinois Conference on Social Welfare.
relations, involving conflicting loyalties, varying group pres-
sures and standards. The membership of our clients in col-
lective effort of various kinds is a healthy evidence of their
ability to participate in modern life. Maturing responsible
citizens need as never before to be able to find their way
among these forces. It is at this point that the group worker
may make some contribution to the understanding of the
total social situation by his acquaintance with group life, its
functions and processes.
In suggesting this possible contribution, I am proposing
that sociology as well as psychology needs to be brought to
bear upon the understanding of the individual in his world.
What the concepts of psychology and psychiatry are to the
understanding of the internal life of the individual, sociology
is to the understanding of
his social relations. Embry-
onic as sociology is at some
points, including the scien-
tific study of the group, it
has I believe certain essen-
tial insights and concepts
which are needed in a pic-
ture of the whole. Case
work through its applica-
tion of psychiatry has done
much to make these disci-
plines fruitful in actual
human relations. Some of
us hope that in the same
way the insights of soci-
ology applied in part through the knowledge of the group
worker may help to illuminate the path to more satisfactory
human relations.
These insights are applicable at two points; the group
relations of our clientele and our own group relations. In
regard to the former, I have come upon two attitudes oc-
casionally among the case workers of my acquaintance. The
first is a tendency to regard affiliations primarily from the
viewpoint of the emotional effect upon the client. If the
client can work off the hostility produced by facing a desti-
tute old age through joining a Townsend club, the social
effects of increasing the strength of the Townsend move-
ment are no great concern of the social worker. If it appears
that the egocentric drive of some obviously maladjusted in-
dividual is expressing itself by heading a current strike or
an unemployed council this is regarded as damaging evidence
against his organization. It is of course true that all sorts
of attitudes and emotions are seeking expression in the or-
ganized movements of the community. Psychiatry and case
work have much to contribute in unraveling the tangled
skein of motivations always present in social movements.
It is not enough, however, to regard these movements wholly
as clues to the emotional life of the participants. Whatever
their psychological origin they also must be viewed socio-
logically in terms of their social consequences. These are
related to but not identical with their origins. I have often
wondered what might have been lost to the religious and
cultural life of the Middle Ages if some social worker had
gotten hold of young Francis of Assisi before his conflict
with his father finally sent him on the road.
Another attitude which I have come upon occasionally
does recognize the social implications of group membership
but tends to judge them conventionally. We do not hesitate
to refer our clients to their church or to a nearby settlement
if they need recreation. But we do not show the same free-
APRIL 1937
103
dom in recognizing the value of their relation to Contro-
versial organizations, such as unions, political parties, youth
movements or pressure groups for legislative purposes.
Social work if it is to make a really integrated approach
to human situations must, I believe, view the individual in
his world, seeing both the person and the network of rela-
tionship in which he moves. That network is a complex
of forces in which each person plays his part. It is my hope
that the group worker's understanding of the group and of
the community, added to the case worker's insight into the
life of the individual may give us a more realistic approach
to both the motivations and the social consequences of our
collective behavior.
And finally there is the contribution which I hope group
work may make to the group relations of us all. We have
seen in recent years the development of increasing interest
in the improvement of group life itself. Instances of this
can be seen in the rise of new forms of discussion which
encourage free, more creative and more intelligent group
thinking. What is back of this? Is it merely the pleasure
of spinning fine theories for their own sake? It is more
than that. It is a faith, born of experience, that our collec-
tive life, our living and working together — yes, even in com-
mittees— has in it some of our profoundest satisfactions if
we know how to handle the relationships involved. What
we want for our club members in the group work agencies,
we want for ourselves. We know by experience that where
autocracy can be banished, where each is freed from fear
or sense of inferiority to make his contribution creatively to
the group, there may spring up a wide expanding experi-
ence for us all. We are beginning to formulate what socially
mature group experience may be and to have some glimpse
of how it can be brought about. One of the contributions
therefore which I should like to see group work make is the
study of this process, and the developing of group tech-
niques so that we may help to create for us all a group life
more effective in group achievement and more enriching to
its participants.
Social Security for Social Workers
By KATHRYN CLOSE
f <^~^>| HARITY begins at home" is a commendable
adage too often honored only in the breach. A
^—* flagrant example in the past came to light when
the public learned that half the slums of New York City
were owned by one of the country's richest churches. A
current illustration confronts the social agencies which,
after their successful efforts to help launch a Social Security
program, find their own workers excluded from its benefits.
The executives of many agencies were surprised and
shocked by this exclusion. Certainly nothing in the recom-
mendations of the Advisory Committee on National Eco-
nomic Security suggested that those organizations which
were doing all they could to further unemployment and old
age insurance should be excluded from the eventual legis-
lation. But while social workers were liberally represented
at congressional hearings, so, too, were representatives of
hospital associations and educational councils. And while
the social workers were busy examining the proposed bill
from a long-range viewpoint, the hospital associations and
educational councils were concentrating on the financial as-
pects which threatened their traditional privileges of tax
exemption. They finally secured a definition of "employ-
ment" in the act, which excepted any "service performed
in the employ of a corporation, community chest, fund or
foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious,
charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes, or
for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no
part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of
any private shareholder or individual." [Section 210 (b)
(7)— U. S. Social Security Act.]
Having been caught napping, the representatives of vari-
ous social agencies are now wide awake, demanding that
their employes also be granted the right to old age benefits
and unemployment compensation. Initiated by the National
Board of the YWCA several meetings of prominent social
workers have been held in New York to discuss the matter.
As the conference and discussion progressed it became
104
apparent that the social workers were more interested in
the possibility of gaining admittance to old age benefit pro-
visions than in unemployment compensation.
It was partly this same point of view which resulted in
the exclusion of the non-profit agencies from the federal
act. Robert Jolly, representing a joint committee of the
American Hospital Association, the Catholic Hospital Asso-
ciation and the Protestant Hospital Association, and Cloyd
H. Marvin, representing the American Council on Educa-
tion, whose statements at the hearings on the bill were
chiefly responsible for the exemption, urged that employes
of hospitals and educational institutions do not need social
insurance because they have steady work. It never was
clearly brought out in the hearings why constant employ-
ment precludes the need for old age insurance, especially
since Monsignor Griffin, representing the Catholic Hospital
Association, testified at the hearings that during the de-
pression many hospitals avoided lay-offs by cutting salaries,
until some employes received only maintenance.
Although the heads of a few national agencies have ex-
pressed interest in unemployment insurance for social work-
ers, among them Allen T. Burns of Community Chests
and Councils, Inc. and James E. West of the Boy Scouts
of America, the greater number have been concerned with
exclusion from the old age security provisions of the federal
act. Only a handful, however, were interested enough in
either phase to put in a word while the act was being de-
bated. There was no concentrated effort to overcome the
opposition of hospital and educational administrators. Early
in 1935 Walter West, spokesman for a group of national
agencies, including the American Association of Social
Workers, the YMCA, National Recreation Association and
others, wrote the chairmen of both House and Senate com-
mittees pointing out that non-profit organizations "would
be severely compromised in asking or accepting any exemp-
tion from a measure whose social purposes these agencies
advocate for commercial or industrial enterprises."
THE SURVEY
Now that the "compromising position" has become a fact,
the only apparent way out is through an amendment to the
federal Social Security Act. Four have been suggested:
1. That Section 210 (b) (7) be eliminated, and a new
section added to the effect that "A corporation, community
chest, fund or foundation organized and operated exclu-
sively for religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educa-
tional purposes, or for the prevention of cruelty to children
or animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to
the benefit of any private shareholder or individual may be
exempted from this act on specific application to the Social
Security Board."
2. That Section 210 (b) (7) remain, but with an amend-
ment permitting organizations in the exempted categories
to come within the act if they so wish.
3. That Section 210 (b) (7) be revised in its statement
of exemptions to read approximately ". . . service performed
in the employ of a corporation organized and operated ex-
clusively for religious, educational or hospital purposes; no
part of the earnings of which inures to the benefit of any
private shareholder or individual."
4. That Section 210 (b) (7) be revised, likewise in its
exemptions to read: ". . . services performed in the employ
of hospitals, churches, schools, colleges and universities."
Most of the interested social workers hold that the first
of these suggestions is the most desirable. Why, they ask,
should we have to apply for what should be our rights as
American citizens? Let those who wish to be exempt do
the asking.
But desirable as is the "may be exempted ... on specific
application" phrase the consensus of opinion seems to be
that for the present this change in the law could not be
obtained. So, reasoning that a tasty pill is better than no
pill, Suggestion No. 2 is recommended. But those with
whom the necessity for applying for what should be a
"right" still rankles, prefer the third and fourth suggestions.
In these, however, there may lurk a drop of hemlock.
The possible poison in the last two suggestions means
the breaking up of the traditional tax exempt category, de-
fined in Section 210 (b) (7), exemption clause of the act.
DOWN the years non-profit organizations have jealously
guarded their tax exempt privileges, so far affect-
ing them only as property owners. Would the splitting up
of this category in regard to the payroll tax set a prece-
dent for future taxation? Many fear that it would, though
they do not fear the Social Security levy if all their tradi-
tional companions are also taxed.
The question of tax exemption was, of course, the root
of the opposition to inclusion on the part of the National
Educational Council and the Joint Committee of the
American, Catholic and Protestant Hospital Associations
while the Social Security Bill was still in committee. One
of their spokesmen, said before the Senate committee:
The problem has always been one, and always must be one
of evaluating social methods, for insofar as the government
diminishes by taxes the resources of educational and charitable
organizations it diminishes their capacity for service to their
several communities and increases the burdens which must fall
upon the government.
Thus the problem boils down to the circular question of
whether it is better for an organization to help provide for
its employes' security and let the government supplement its
work, or for an organization to devote all its resources to
its program and let its employes fall back upon the govern-
ment when they are old.
No rose colored glasses are worn by Walter West, execu-
tive secretary of the American Association of Social Work-
ers, one of the first to fight for inclusion under the Social
Security Act. Mr. West, whose organization was not rep-
resented at the recent meetings in New York, sees very
little hope for security for social workers under the present
act. In the first place, the majority of social workers now-
adays are engaged in public employment, that is, employ-
ment under the federal, state, or muncipal government, and
are exempt under Section 210 (b) (5) and (6) of the
federal act. An amendment striking out this exemption
would raise new problems — the whole question of con-
stitutionality and the right of one branch of the government
to tax another. Only Mr. West seems to have thought of
these "forgotten" social workers and of another large group
who are employed by organizations too small to have the
four employes required to make them eligible for unemploy-
ment insurance. Another obstacle to favorable action is that
an organized opposition strong enough to be heard when the
bill was before Congress could (and probably would)
gather its strength again to oppose any such amendment.
HOWEVER not all the member organizations of the
National Educational Council or of the American,
Protestant or Catholic Hospital Associations are in agreement
with the position taken by these organizations. Douglas A.
Gibbs, assistant treasurer of Columbia University, when
questioned recently, seemed to think it a matter of no im-
portance whether the law required the university to apply
for exemption or granted it automatically. The main reason,
he said, that Columbia felt a right to exemption is that
it has at present a voluntary 5 percent joint payment an-
nuity plan for all employes. There is a possibility that these
annuities will be made compulsory in the near future. Mr.
Gibbs seemed to feel that the university could not shoulder
the additional burden of a government Social Security tax.
He denied that Columbia had ever opposed inclusion under
the act on the grounds of traditional tax exemption, point-
ing out that the university at present pays many taxes.
Mr. Gibbs' attitude indicated that the Columbia Uni-
versity authorities do not intend to apply for inclusion under
the State Unemployment Insurance Law. He pointed out
that staff employment in general is only slightly affected by
business ups and downs.
This point of view from a member of the supposed oppo-
sition would seem to indicate that any of the proposed
amendments might not be too difficult to bring about, and
that perhaps the reason this same opposition proved so
effective at the time of the hearings, was that it had itself
no opposition. If the social workers' representatives kept
silent, as they say, for tactical reasons — fears of delaying the
passage of the bill — these reasons vanished with the birth
of the act, clearing the way for action. The only question
now left to be considered can be stated :
"Is a person by reason of his employment with a non-
profit organization to lose the rights granted to his fellow
citizens employed in industry?" or
"Is it not discrimination to decree that one employe mak-
ing the same salary as another by reason of his type of em-
ployment shall be denied privileges granted the other?"
APRIL 1937
105
MISS BAILEY SAYS . . .
"So We Told 'em Plain Facts"
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
THE old colored woman was making a great business
of selecting two five-cent wash cloths, and the salesgirl
obviously lacked the technique of waiting on two cus-
tomers at once. Miss Bailey, curbing her chronic northern
impatience, watched the transaction. The wash cloths must
be yellow and they must have "fancy wroppin' " — which,
translated, meant a gift package.
"Lan's, Miss Hattie, I couldn't a give no golden weddin'
present this year a year ago. I sure does 'predate this hu-
man security."
Miss Bailey felt her ears go up like a hound dog. This
was what she had come for, and she'd found it in a five-
and-ten store !
Miss Hattie, proceeding leisurely with the "fancy wrop-
pin'," took up the topic.
"I reckon everybody appreciates it that has it, Mary. But
what you goin' to do if the legislature don't vote the money
to keep it up? That money's goin' to be hard to find."
"Yessum, Miss Hattie, but these gennlemen ain't goin' to
turn us old folks off. They jes' kain't afford to. They'd lose
all that money from Washin'ton. An' now that all us knows
all the fac's 'bout human security, they'll jes' hafta fin'
the rest o' the money. Thank yo, ma'am, Miss Hattie, that's
sure a nice lookin' golden weddin' present."
The old woman pottered off and the salesgirl turned
to 'Miss Bailey, now more anxious for conversation than
to make her small purchase.
"Did she mean that she has an old age allowance, and
how did she come to know so much about it?"
Miss Hattie straightened her counter as she answered.
"Yes ma'am, that's it, only we call it human security
here and we all know about it. We learned about it be-
cause we were going to vote about it. After our human
security week you'd 'a' had to be deaf, dumb an' blind
not to know. I reckon Mary's right ; now that we all know
the facts the legislature just can't rightly afford not to find
the money."
Miss Bailey took that thought with her out into the sunny
park. Settled on a bench beside a flaming hibiscus she turned
it over in her mind. That the legislature would act —
couldn't rightly afford not to — because we, the people,
know the facts. Whew, that was something for the book!
She had heard that a particularly strenuous campaign for
social security measures had gone on in this reputedly
"backward" state, but, being slightly case-hardened in such
matters as "weeks," had not given it too much importance.
But that the facts should have penetrated to the old Marys
and Miss Hatties of this easy-going little town, and along
with the facts an awareness of what moves legislators to
action — that was something different again. She had to
know more about "our human security week."
They were forthright about it in the office of the state
welfare department, spearhead of the campaign. There had
to be an amendment to the state constitution before the
terms of the federal social security act could be met, in-
deed the existence of the state department itself, scraping
along precariously on left-over FERA funds, probably was
at stake. Nothing could happen without the amendment
authorizing the state to appropriate money for public assist-
ance purposes. "And so we put our backs into it."
While a girl was spreading out the record of the amend-
ment campaign Miss Bailey heard something of the events
that had preceded it. Prior to FERA there had been little
or no history of relief in this sun drenched state. Life was
simple and easy. Anyone with a hoe and a fishing pole was
fairly certain not to starve. There were poor farms for the
old, the county "pauper lists" for the destitute. "And I
don't mean the kind of destitute you no'th'nahs mean, I
mean honest-to-God destitute. There's a difference."
But the depression, on top of a collapsed boom and a
couple of first-class hurricanes, changed all that. There was
too much honest-to-God destitution ; the old simple ways
could not cope with it. Then came the FERA, greeted at
first almost as an answer to prayer; later criticized for
"ridin' a high horse . . . and what's goin' to happen when
the federal folks pull out?"
The federal folks had thought of that too, so they wel-
comed— some said they instigated — the action of the legis-
lature in setting up a well blue-printed state welfare de-
partment even though it hadn't a thin dime to bless itself
with, and couldn't have until the state constitution was
amended. The FERA found some money it could allocate
for administration, and organization got under way. There
was a strong state staff reaching out to district boards and
staffs which in turn reached into the counties. Although
there was little or no money for relief the new organiza-
tion found plenty to do; much that had long needed doing.
AT its 1935 session the legislature proposed an amend-
ment to be submitted to the electorate which would
permit the state to provide for "a uniform state-wide system"
of public benefits "and appropriate money therefor." It was
a first step but there was a real possibility — such was public
inertia — that it might be the last. Only if the amendment
were carried with a whacking big majority at the 1936 elec-
tion would timorous legislators be moved to further action.
"If we could only make a beginning on old age assist-
ance, only have something to show," said the state welfare
folk, and the district boards and staffs. There was only one
possibility, so remote that no one really believed it could be
realized. The state could not vote funds to meet federal
old age grants. The counties could, if they would, vote
"poor funds" for that purpose if they had any funds. But
if the state could collect from the counties would the Social
Security Board blink at its rules and match the lump sum ?
The Social Security Board was not very warm to the
idea but finally agreed to it as a "temporary emergency"
due to expire after the next legislative session. Then began
a great scurrying around to bring in the counties. It was not
easy, for some of the counties were as broke as the boom,
and not a dollar would Washington lay down until every
last county had made its contribution. Each county was
promised that every eligible poor farm inmate and "county
case" would be given first preference for old age assistance.
Each county needed not only to put up more than it was
now spending on its aged, but must put it up quarterly in a
106
THE SURVEY
lump sum, to be sure it got its money back doubled with
federal money. The same percentage of needy in each
county must be taken care of, the program must be on a
uniform statewide basis and the accident of which side
of a county line you lived on could not make the difference
in getting or not getting assistance. It took a good many
months, a lot of persuasive argument by district board mem-
bers and strong appeals to local pride — "what will the rest
of the state think of us if we block everything" — before
the last doubtful county commissioners "found the money."
THE upshot was that for a good month or so before
the election the welfare people had "something to
show." The allowances were not large, at least they would
not seem so to "no'th'n" eyes, but they were large enough to
get a good many old folk out of the poor farms and off the
"pauper lists." So effective was the demonstration that more
than one harassed board of county commissioners asked the
district boards and staffs to take over and manage their
"pauper lists" and relief money. "Our politicians think that
relief is just a headache. 'Reliefers' don't pay the poll tax
and can't vote."
But even with "something to show" there was still so
much indifference to the amendment that something had to
be done if it were to be carried with the force of a man-
date. "And so we decided to put on a good old-fashioned
drive. We called it Human Security Week. That sounded
a little community chesty, but it said what we wanted it
to say."
There was not much new or strikingly original in the
plan of the campaign as Miss Bailey looked over the record
spread out for her. On paper it was like most of the big
drives for what Bostonians call "divers worthy causes."
There was an imposing state-wide committee of prominent
citizens, a governor's proclamation, a speakers' bureau, post-
ers, leaflets, car stickers, radio programs, and a spate of
newspaper releases, their acceptability evidenced by a great
fat clipping book.
It was only when Miss Bailey really dug into all this
material that she began to see why this campaign had been
different, why the "facts" had penetrated so far.
It was a fact campaign broken down to meet, within the
area of its own experience, every community and every or-
ganized force in the state. It did not harp very much on the
human sympathy appeal but took human decency for granted
and went on from there. It made little or no attempt to put
forward a social philosophy or to "educate the public."
That could come later ; the issue here and now was to roll
up a good majority for the amendment. Since fear of in-
creased public spending and taxation was uppermost in
the public mind, the campaign managers — in effect the staff
of the state welfare department — rode full tilt at the dragon
of dollars and cents. The federal-state plan of financial co-
operation, made possible by the amendment, would relieve
counties of a large part of their burden for dependency.
"Look what it has already done about the aged ; it has made
$2 grow where only a dollar grew before. More old folks
are being cared for and better cared for, even if the counties
are spending a little more than before." The point was con-
stantly driven in that unless the amendment was passed,
thereby enabling the legislature to act, the state would actu-
ally lose money. "Here we have a chance to get back from
the national government a part of what our citizens pay in
income and other federal taxes. . . . As a state we are now
getting so-and-so much for our aged. Without the amend-
ment we shall lose all that as well as the possibility of assist-
ance for our children and our blind people. We can't afford
to lose this money."
Miss Bailey could see all this as effective argument for
large meetings, but it did not explain old Mary and Miss
Hattie. "However did you get it through to them?"
"By taking it to them where they were and giving it to
them in doses of a size that they could swallow," replied
the sun-browned girl who had been at the hub of the whole
business. "When we asked old Mary's minister to preach a
sermon on human security — and we asked every last minis-
ter in the state — we did not supply him with high-pow-
ered general social arguments. We gave him the facts as
they existed for his people in his county — how many col-
ored old folks and children and blind would get allow-
ances if the amendment carried and the legislature acted —
and we left it to him to expound them. Oh yes, we had
those facts, county by county, town by town.
"In the case of the Miss Hatties our speakers went where
they were, to their places of employment — a five minute
meeting before the store opened — to their club and church
society meetings; wherever they gathered together we fol-
lowed them, gave them the facts in their own language and
passed out a little leaflet that anyone who could read could
understand."
"And the backwoods country?" queried Miss Bailey.
"We didn't recognize any. We used the same method in
one place as in another — facts, plain facts, localized facts,
presented in the simplest possible terms. We sent to every
country weekly in the state an article telling the exact con-
dition in that county — how many aged, children and blind
would be eligible, how much money the county was now
spending for relief purposes, how much would come into
the county if the federal-state plan became effective. And if
you think they didn't eat it up take a look at that scrapbook."
""\7"OU make it sound almost too simple," commented
1 Miss Bailey. "What was the opposition saying all
this time?"
"The only articulate opposition was on straight political
grounds and we didn't bother about it. We were not mak-
ing a political campaign. The real opposition was ignor-
ance and indifference. So we poured out the facts and beat
the big drums."
"And then came November third and the election."
"Yes and a twelve to one vote for the amendment."
"So what next? There's still the legislature."
"There certainly is, and a new tax-shy governor to boot.
We've kept the whole subject wide open by stimulating
local pressures on the members of the legislature — it's the
hometown voter they answer to, you know — and by feeding
out more and more facts to the newspapers up and down
the state. We're as sure as time and taxes that we'll get an
appropriation for old age assistance, but the real test will
come on assistance to children and the blind."
Back on her park bench Miss Bailey thought over the
formula: "Facts, plain facts, localized facts, presented in
the language of the listener." She knew enough about pub-
licity methods to know that this had not been easy ; but it
had worked. And possibly, just possibly, she told herself,
this simple, concrete formula had tapped a root for social
growth which could not have been reached by the exposi-
tion of a social philosophy or by an appeal for social justice.
When the old Marys and Miss Hatties knew what it was
all about you were getting somewhere.
APRIL 1937
107
BEHAVIOR AS IT IS BEHAVED - VI
The Pashkas Eat Breakfast
By ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE
IT was time for Peter Pashka to eat
his breakfast and be off to work. The
five o'clock whistle had already blown,
and his wife was stirring about in the
kitchen. The wood crackled in the stove,
and the potatoes were boiling hard. Mr.
Pashka had a job ten miles away, and
had to leave his house at exactly five-
thirty in order to catch the bus which
got him to the foundry on time. His job
was hard labor. But he was glad to Be
working again after a long lay-off, even
though he never managed to start out
from home without grumbling. He had
worked early and hard all his life. He had
gotten up at five in the morning for so
many years that he awoke on the dot.
And for so many years he had grumbled
at the necessity for it, that his complaints
were as much a part of his program as
his awakening. He was hardly conscious
that he uttered them. As he put on his
shirt, and stamped in to the kitchen,
buckling the straps of his overalls, com-
plaints burst automatically from his great
muscular chest.
Mr. Pashka seated himself at the sink,
the big plate of potatoes that was his
breakfast so smoking hot that he had to
blow on them. He salted them liberally,
and between grunts and puffs, began to
put them away behind his luxuriant
moustache.
"I s'pose Tilly ain't up?" he snapped,
wiping his mouth with his big bandana.
"No, she ain't," agreed his wife.
"I s'pose she come in late?" he contin-
ued. His wife nodded. Mr. Pashka took
a long breath. Here at last was a valid
grievance.
"Pay her board?" he inquired further.
"Not yet, she ain't." His wife's voice
was apologetic.
"Not yet? Not yet?" Mr. Pashka's
voice rose in rage and he sprang to his
feet. "Why not yet? Why not? How long
she t'ink she's goin' to pay everybody else
but her own pa what she owes? I'm goin'
to get that money right now. Three dol-
lars she owes me. Maybe she'll remember
to pay her pa if he wakes her up a few
times."
"She needs her sleep. She works hard,
too. She's a good worker." Mrs. Pashka's
protest was faint, but she could not fore-
bear making it even though she knew that
it was less than useless. If there was one
thing more than another that roused
Peter Pashka to fine frenzy, it was any
indication of insubordination on the part
of his daughter. The airs taken upon
themselves by American women outraged
SOCIAL MORES
WAS Mr. Pashka unusually bad
tempered, or was this merely
his idea of how a man should behave?
Why? Did the various members of the
family behave according to their tradi-
tional custom? Did the children clash
with their father more than they would
have done in the old country? Why?
Can you cite examples in your own
experience of clashes between parents
and children in relation to money?
Clothes? Marriage? Place of residence?
Recreation? Religion?
Were any of the Pashkas right in
their stand? Why? Why not? Can you
be impartial in this judgment, or is your
judgment colored by the atmosphere in
which you yourself were reared?
How, in the same American society,
can people like the Pashkas get on
without quarreling with the people of
Main Street? If the Pashkas had more
money would their home atmosphere be
different? Why? Why not? Do not all
parents bring up their children in their
own standards? Is not the imposition
of parental standards the basis of all
education? Could, or should it be other-
wise?
SUGGESTED READING
ROBERT LOWIE: CULTURE AND ETHNOLOGY.
WILLIAM OGBURN: SOCIAL CHANCE.
KNIGHT DUNLAP: PSYCHOLOGY. Chapter 8,
Genesis and Retention of Habits.
MIRIAM VAN WATERS: YOUTH IN CON-
FLICT.
JOHN DEWEY: HUMAN NATURE AND CON-
DUCT. Sections 4 and 5. Custom and Habit.
his every tradition of masculine superior-
ity. It was convenient to have his daugh-
ter a financial asset rather than a liability.
So much he granted to himself. But for
all that he did not propose to have her
get the upper hand. She might earn the
money. But he knew better ways of spend-
ing it than she did.
In spite of all that his wife could do
to quiet him, Mr. Pashka stamped around
the kitchen until no one but little Pash-
kas accustomed to such an uproar, could
have remained asleep. Then throwing
open the door of the living room he strode
across to the daybed where Tilly slept
with her little sister at her feet, and
shook the girl roughly. The smaller child,
startled out of sleep, hid her face in the
bed clothes. But the older girl jumped
out of bed, her eyes blazing. Added to a
streak of her father's temper, was the
knowledge that her parents needed her
pay envelope more than she did their day-
bed.
"What are you waking me up for this
time of day? Are you crazy?"
"Crazy? No, I ain't crazy," her father
shouted. "I want to know why you don't
pay your board money like an honest girl.
Put it down, now, on this table." And he
pounded the frail stand with his powerful
fist.
"I ain't got it," Tilly was frank and
fearless. "I told Ma I had to buy new
shoes and stockings this week. I can't
work barefoot at my place. It's a swell
joint. I gotta look like a lady." As she
spoke she tried to kick her shoes under
the bed, but her father pushed her aside,
and he picked up one of them, holding it
high between thum'b and forefinger.
"You pay good money for that, when
you owe your pa for board?"
There was some excuse for a plain
man's disgust with the fragile footwear
which had seemed so essential to Tilly,
and so mysteriously alluring to her
mother, but which appeared to be in a
fair way to madden her father. It was a
thin sandal with very high heel, and many
little leather straps which buckled here
and there to leave most of the foot ex-
posed. Dangling from the frail slipper,
was a stocking as thin as cobwebs.
"My daughter should wear such truck
on her feet?" roared Mr. Pashka, pawing
at the offending stocking. Before his dis-
tracted daughter could stop him the silken
web caught on one of the little buckles.
He tugged at it as though it were a rag,
as indeed it became under his fumbling
fingers.
This was all that was needed to arouse
Tilly to the same fine fury in which she,
more than any of his children, showed
her kinship with her father. She flew at
him clawing like a wildcat. Before his
huge fist felled her, his face was bleeding
from scratches from her long pink nails.
The eldest son, Joe, came down from
the loft, pulling on his trousers as he
came, pushed aside the four children gath-
ered at the door and joined the battle,
more Pashka fire in his eye. Without so
much as inquiring into the merits of the
case he dragged Tilly up from the floor
and thrust a decisive elbow into his
father's stomach. Then in a voice as thun-
derous as Mr. Pashka's own he shouted,
108
THE SURVEY
"Can a man get any quiet sleep in this
house? Or can't he? If I have to stop
another fight, I'll leave, and I don't mean
maybe."
"He tore my swell stockings," shrilled
Tilly. "I just got 'em. And I ain't got any
others to wear to work. I paid for 'em;
he didn't."
"What she buy crazy stuff like that
for, when she owes me money?" Mr.
Pashka was righteously indignant.
"She has to wear high class clothes
at her place," Joe explained. "Now you've
tore "em, I don't know how she'll go to
work."
For a moment silence fell on the fam-
ily. The little girls and boys peered
through the door; Tilly rocked back and
forth, her face in her hands; Mrs. Pash-
ka fumbled with her apron. Even Mr.
Pashka, though still panting, had nothing
to- say.
Joe took thought, then asked his sister
brusquely, "Got any money left?" She
nodded.
"How much?"
Tilly fished under the mattress for her
handbag, and with one eye on her father
extracted three dollar bills, which she
handed to her brother. Joe delved into
his pocket for change. Fifty cents he
handed to Tilly, and $2.50 to Mr. Pashka.
"You tore her stockings. You'll have to
pay for 'em," he adjudicated sternly.
Then turning to Tilly, "Next payday, you
pay your board on time, and you won't
get your clothes tore off." With this ulti-
matum, he turned back to the kitchen,
pushed a child or two from in front of
the sink, and in silence began to shave.
Mr. Pashka looked at the money in
his hand, and sucked in his breath, appar-
ently all ready to start another fight over
the lost 50 cents. Then thinking better
of it, he returned to the kitchen, picked
up his cap and lunch pail and strode out
of the house.
From the living room Tilly gave her
ultimatum: "I ain't goin' to live in this
doghouse another day. I got plenty o' girl
friends to live with, who won't charge
me any more board. I ain't goin' to have
clothes I paid for myself, torn to pieces.
I don't have to, and I won't."
Joe, twisting his face the better to
shave his neck, spoke with calm authority.
"You'll stay on livin' in this house till
some guy marries you or you're twenty-
one, or else I'll break your neck."
There was nothing for Tilly to say.
Enough was enough. She had to get to
work on time whatever the state of her
stockings. The children had already for-
gotten the battle and were chasing each
other around the stove. Joe wiped his
hands on the roller towel and reached
for a potato. Mrs. Pashka cuffed first
one child and then another. "Will you be
still now and eat!" Morning at the Pash-
ka's was taking its customary course.
This is the sixth in a series of sketches
described by the author in her introduc-
tion as "life occurrences without labels."
[See THE SURVEY, November 1936, page
333.] The seventh, The Evolution of
Carra Perna, will appear in May. The
sketches are from an unpublished book.
Selections for SURVEY publication, their
order and arrangement are by the editors.
OUR ILLEGIBLE FRIENDS
This cluster of signatures gathered from The Survey's mail is
offered as a test to bright readers. Clues for the floundering can
be found on page 124. Following the approved puzzle procedure
we will start you off by revealing that those Spencerian flourishes
to the left conceal the name of Public Friend No. 1, Lewis E.
Lawes of Sing Sing.
(7) /
, *
APRIL 1937
109
The Common Welfare
Minimum Wage Sustained
FOURTEEN years — and the right of states to protect
women against starvation wages, which Florence Kelley
so long ago fought for, is upheld. Now for the Nation ! By
switching from the "conservative" to the "liberal" wing of
the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Roberts not only up-
held the minimum wage law of the State of Washington,
but also gave his fellow Americans another dramatic exam-
ple of the "one man rule" which at present determines what
is and what is not the law of the land. The latest five-to-
four decision handed down March 29 came less than a year
after the equally divided opinion in the Tipaldo case, which
knocked out the New York State minimum wage law, and
created a "no man's land" wherein neither Congress nor
the states could legislate to safeguard wages and hours.
[See Survey Graphic, July 1936, page 412.] The distinc-
tion between the two cases is a legal hair line. The New
York case was argued on the ground that the ruling laid
down in the Adkins case in which in 1923 the Court held
the District of Columbia minimum wage law unconstitu-
tional, did not apply to the case at bar because the circum-
stances were different. Five justices rejected this reasoning,
holding that the circumstances were the same and that the
Adkins ruling therefore applied. No review of the Adkins
case itself was made since "reconsideration of that decision
had not been sought." In the Washington case, the Adkins
decision itself was challenged, and re-examining the grounds
for it, in the light of the changing times, five justices now
held that ". . . the case of Adkins vs. Children's Hospital
should be, and it is, overruled." On the heels of the deci-
sion came the announcement that the District of Columbia,
its minimum wage law restored, is at once setting up a
wage board ; and that a new minimum wage law will be
introduced in the New York legislature.
On the same day, the Court unanimously upheld the Rail-
way Labor Act. [See Survey Graphic, March 1937, page
133.] The Court found that the section of the law requiring
employers to bargain collectively with representatives of a
majority of their employes is a proper safeguard of inter-
state commerce. As we go to press, five cases involving the
Wagner Labor Relations Act are still pending. These also
turn on the principle of collective bargaining, though steel,
bus, newspaper and clothing workers, not railway employes
are affected, and the commerce clause of the constitution
becomes a decisive factor.
Child Labor
FRIENDS of the federal child labor amendment, now
ratified by twenty-eight states, view as antagonistic
moves three substitute measures recently introduced in the
U.S. Senate. Senator Borah and Senator Vandenberg pro-
pose rephrased amendments reducing the minimum age for
child workers to fourteen and sixteen respectively. The
National Child Labor Committee has pointed out that the
reason for setting eighteen in the amendment already well
on the way to ratification is not to forbid wage earning by
all young persons under that age, but to permit the regula-
tion of employment of youths between sixteen and eighteen,
and to bar them from certain hazardous occupations. The
Vandenberg amendment also tries to offset Catholic opposi-
tion by substituting the phrases "limit and prohibit" and "la-
bor for hire" for "regulate" and "employment." There is of
course no certainty that this change would modify the oppo-
sition in the Catholic Church to child labor legislation, and
it would leave unprotected the thousands of children who
work as "little merchants" in the street trades.
With the backing of the American Bar Association, Nich-
olas Murray Butler, the Committee for the Protection of
the Child, Family, School and Church, and other opponents
of the child labor amendment, Senator Wheeler of Montana
has introduced a bill making "the products of child labor
subject to the laws of the state into which they are shipped."
This is an attempt to apply to the child labor problem the
principle upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as a regulation
of prison labor. Those who have worked for the ratification
of the child labor amendment point out that while it is a
simple matter to tag prison-made goods at the point of
production, to determine whether goods transported from
one state to another were manufactured by child labor would
require an army of inspectors. Manufacturers would have
to operate under forty-eight different standards. For exam-
ple, New York factories cannot employ children under six-
teen. Under Senator Wheeler's bill, New York could import
goods freely only from seven states.
This proposal is put forward as a "short cut" to the goals
of the Child Labor Amendment. Like so many short cuts,
it is clearly a dead-end road.
Constitutional Amendment
ON the one hand, the drawn-out struggle to amend the
federal constitution in the interest of children has of
course been cited as one of the telling arguments for the
"short-cut" to economic and social legislation held out by
the President's proposal to bring new blood into the U.S.
Supreme Court. On the other hand, as alternative to that
step, a new crop of general amendments has been brought
forward in the course of hearings on that measure and the
country-wide debate.
Not to be confused with these developments hinging on
the judiciary bill are movements which antedated it, such as
the National Committee for Clarifying the Constitution by
Amendment, of which Grace Abbott of the University of
Chicago is chairman, and Frieda Miller, head of the Bureau
of Women and Children in Industry of the New York State
Labor Department, secretary. Its small drafting committee
is endeavoring to frame an amendment in broad general
terms rather than a specific grant of power to Congress.
The national committee, made up of representatives of farm
groups, labor groups, the National Federation of Settle-
ments, the National Consumers' League and many other
organizations, has emphasized its support of President
Roosevelt's program for the reform of the U.S. Supreme
Court. The amendment it plans to sponsor is offered not as
a substitute for this program, but as a long run solution.
Meanwhile the "constitutional convention" summoned
110
THE SURVEY
to meet in Washington in mid-March to consider constitu-
tional change was called off by the group sponsoring it, until
the judiciary debate comes to a conclusion.
Safer Nursing
MR. and Mrs. Public are entitled to know just what
they are getting when they engage a nurse, even a
so-called practical nurse, contends the New York State
Nurses Association. In New York as in many other states,
qualifications for the title "registered nurse" are fixed and
protected by state law but there is no adequate regulation
of the great numbers of nurses who cannot write "R.N."
after their names. This means some 42,000 unclassified
nurses of all degrees of ability and training — or lack of it —
are working in New York, as well as 38,000 "R.Ns."
This pot-pourri of 42,000 unclassified nurses includes:
registered nurses with the finest of preparation from other
states, for whom the present law makes no allowance and
who cannot take examinations for New York registration ;
graduates of nonaccredited and low standard schools gen-
erally; "undergraduates" who for some reason did not com-
plete training or failed to qualify; self-elected "nurses"
who may have been housekeepers, beauticians, or the like.
A hotly-contested effort to get licensing requirements
for all nurses into state law has been before the New York
legislature this year, in the Esquirol-Stewart bill sponsored
by the State Nurses Association, the State Medical Society,
the State Hospital Association and other groups concerned
with good professional practice. The bill would require that
everyone who nurses for hire be licensed by the State De-
partment of Education, according to not too stringent mini-
mum standards, and would class unregistered but licensed
nurses as "nursing aides," prepared to care for chronic or
convalescent cases.
The bill has received cavalier treatment in the legisla-
ture. It was pushed into committee with a number of spine-
less nurse practice measures, seemingly designed to give
status to graduates of nonaccredited schools. With the
World's Fair just ahead, New York's professional nursing
organizations anticipate an increasing need for licensing un-
registered nurses and plan a vigorous campaign to enlist
public support for an adequate nurse practice law in 1938.
Textile Conference
TEXTILES rate as a sick industry on the world's
charts, and delegates from the textile-producing coun-
tries are meeting this month in the Tri-partite Textile
Conference convened in Washington by the International
Labour Office. Among the primary producers of textiles are
China, France, Great Britain, India, Japan, the United
States and Soviet Russia. Germany and Italy, also impor-
tant textile countries, resigned from the I.L.O. at the time
they withdrew from the League of Nations. The Washington
meeting was planned as a technical conference preliminary
to consideration of what can be done for textiles at the
International Labour Conference next June in Geneva. The
gathering is unique for two chief reasons: Representatives
of employers, employes and the government of countries
where textiles are important in the national economy will
for the first time try to hammer out a common policy for
this basic industry. Second, the scope of the conference in-
dicates an expansion of the field of the International Labour
Office, hitherto limited to labor standards and economic
maladjustments, here broadened to include policy basic to
the readjustment of industrial factors in terms of social-
economic planning. Among the themes discussed are unem-
ployment, hours of work, wages, child and woman labor,
speed-up, currency devaluation and tariffs.
Quakers and Miners
STEEL and coal corporations, organized labor, the Elm-
hirst Foundation and the Quakers are cooperating in
an experiment to solve the problems of "depressed areas"
through subsistence farming and the retraining and reem-
ployment of "surplus" workers. Myron C. Taylor, chair-
man of U.S. Steel, E. T. Weir, president of National Steel,
P. C. Thomas, vice-president of Koppers Coal, Allan Scaife,
president of Pittsburgh Coal, John L. Lewis, head of the
United Mine Workers and of the C.I.O., are among those
who are giving the American Friends Service Committee
their backing and practical support in the new venture.
This Quaker social agency has purchased a two-hundred
acre tract in Fayette County, Pa., on which fifty displaced
miners and their families are to be established with tools,
livestock and seed sufficient to produce foodstuffs on a
subsistence basis. In addition to building their homes and
raising their food supply, miners and their sons will receive
training for jobs in profitable new lines of work. The
back-to-the-land experiment will be supervised by practical
agriculturalists and experienced rehabilitation workers, un-
der the direction of Homer L. Morris, secretary of the so-
cial-industrial section of the service committee. Mr. Morris
points out that no one now knows what to do "when a
community dependent upon one industry, coal, lumber, cot-
ton textiles, for example, is plunged into wholesale depres-
sion by a sudden shift in demand for its products." The goal
of the Fayette County project, Mr. Morris explains, "is to
try to work out techniques of what to do when large num-
bers of men are thrown out of work through some industrial
catastrophe, just as the Red Cross has learned what to do
in physical catastrophes."
And So On . . .
THE city boosters have backing for their ballyhoo. Sta-
tistical support is given to the popular notion that
growth makes a gay city and a shrinking population a sad
one, in an article by Professor William F. Ogburn in Pub-
lic Management. Hope, progress, expansion, enterprise and
economic advantage have been correlated with population
increase throughout the history of this country, he explains.
• • Of every $100 in rent due the government from Rural
Resettlement communities $93.40 was collected, for Febru-
ary; $92.10 for January. • • "No longer in exile but hap-
pily and thankfully at home," was the expression of mem-
bers of the "University in Exile" (Graduate Faculty of
Political and Social Science of the New School for Social
Research) at their anniversary of four years in America,
April 13-15. Thomas Mann was among distinguished
participants in the celebration. • • Have we a vested interest
in gonorrhea and syphilis? "The crusade against venereal
disease . . . threatens to trample private practice," warns
an editorial in Medical Economics, medico-business maga-
zine. "Consider the tremendous economic loss to the pro-
fession if one sixth of the population is removed from pri-
vate supervision by a policy of free treatment for everyone
who needs it."
APRIL 1937
111
The Social Front
jobs and Workers
T~*HE sit-down is spreading. Three hun-
dred geisha girls recently "sat down"
in the Gyozuko Buddhist temple in
Osaka, Japan. Sympathizers sent gifts of
food, rice wine, bedding and other com-
forts. The strikers observed a daily hour
of worship, with prayers for victory. The
strike lasted eight days. The girls won
recognition of their geisha guild. ...
Disgruntled Coptic monks, one hundred
of them, sat down in their monastery at
Deirel-Moharrak, protesting against re-
stricted social privileges and an unpopu-
lar abbot. At this writing they are
still sitting, and the strike threatens to
spread to a Coptic retreat on the Red
Sea. . . . Sightless employes in the work-
shop of the Pennsylvania Association for
the Blind in Pittsburgh have started a
sit-down strike demanding increased
wages, five weeks' paid sick leave, two
weeks' vacation with pay, paid holidays,
a thirty-five-hour week, abolition of piece
work and the "spy system," more health-
ful working conditions, prompt punching
of time cards, promise of no discrimina-
tion against the strikers. Of the 167
workers in the association's non-profit
broom shop, 107 are on strike. The asso-
ciation calls attention to its $25,000 deficit
last year, and says higher wages are im-
possible at this time.
Remington Rand — In a one hundred
page decision, the National Labor Rela-
tions Board summarizes some 5000 pages
of testimony heard in connection with a
case growing out of strikes in six Rem-
ington Rand plants, involving over 6000
employes. The decision shows that James
H. Rand, Jr., president of the company,
assisted by Earl Harding, a publicity ex-
pert, and J. A. W. Simpson, the con-
cern's lawyer, personally directed the
work of breaking the strike. Professional
strike breakers were hired, and the de-
cision describes the ruthless methods used
by spies and armed guards. The board
refers to the company's discharge of
union workers, its attempts to influence
public officials and bribe union heads, its
spurious back to work movements, its use
of agents to commit acts of violence and
disorder and to provoke others to commit
such acts. The board ordered the com-
pany to reinstate 4000 workers still out
on strike, and to bargain collectively with
the Remington Rand Joint Protective
Board. The company has announced that
it will fight this decision in the courts.
The decision comments on "the unwaver-
ing refusal of the respondent to bargain
collectively with its employes, and the
cold deliberate ruthlessness with which it
fought the strike which its refusal to bar-
gain collectively had precipitated."
Tackling Unrest— States and cities
have been considering or trying out agen-
cies of mediation to cope with the strike
dilemma. An Indiana measure, sponsored
jointly by the state federation of labor
and the state administration provides ma-
chinery for compulsory mediation of labor
disputes. It has passed both houses of the
legislature. In New Jersey, a bill has
been introduced which would establish a
labor relations commission in the state
labor department, with power to decide,
after investigation, which labor group
should be recognized in collective bargain-
ing. A state labor relations board to "bal-
ance bargaining power" between employer
and workers has been proposed in a
measure introduced in the Pennsylvania
legislature, establishing a state body simi-
lar to the National Labor Relations
Board. A bill in the New York legis-
lature would set up a three-man labor
relations commission in the state labor
department. Its functions would be not
only to mediate labor disputes, but to try
to prevent strikes by promoting collective
bargaining between employer and em-
ployes. Ohio's legislature is considering
an anti-injunction bill limiting the power
of courts to issue temporary or perma-
nent restraining orders in labor disputes.
Philadelphia has a Conciliation and
Arbitration Board of fifteen members
credited with settling or averting strikes
affecting more than 100,000 workers
since it was established about a year ago.
The board is appointed by the mayor, and
it has the services of an assistant city
solicitor in charge of labor relations. . . .
Toledo's Industrial Peace Board, now al-
most two years old has handled about
eighty labor disputes, and, according to
Edmund Ruffin, its director, in more
than seventy of them it was able to bring
about settlements before work stopped.
The eighteen members of the board serve
without pay, but the director has a full
time job and is paid a salary by the city.
The services of the board are purely con-
ciliatory and the right to strike is not
impaired by cooperation with it.
Five-and-Ten —An investigation into
the working conditions of girl employes
of the F. W. Grand stores in New York
and Brooklyn, who recently attempted a
"sit down" strike, has been made by the
League of Women Shoppers, Inc., 220
Fifth Avenue, New York. The investi-
gating committee of the league reports
that wages range from $12 to $15 a
week; hours from forty-eight to sixty;
lunch periods are often only fifteen min-
utes; there is no pay for overtime. When
the stores close for legal holidays, the
workers have to make up the time. In the
restaurants, where the girls are paid
$13.50 a week, waitresses are required
to pay 25 cents daily for lunch, and 75
cents weekly for laundering uniforms, and
to pay for all breakage. The committee
found "highly unsanitary lavatories," no
rest rooms. The workers, who have
formed Local 1250 of the Department
Store Employes' Union, demand a forty-
hour week, $20 minimum wage, one hour
lunch period, improved sanitary condi-
tions, time and a half for overtime, legal
holidays without docking, medical care
and expenses to be paid by management
for injuries received in the store.
Child Labor— The federal child labor
amendment was rejected by the lower
house of the New York legislature, by a
vote which cut squarely across party lines.
The determined opposition of the Catholic
Church was the chief reason for this de-
feat, after the favorable vote in the state
senate. [See The Survey, March 1937,
page 79.] Republicans have introduced a
state child labor bill which they propose
to make a party measure. Assemblyman
Rossi has introduced a bill calling for a
referendum on the federal amendment on
May 20. . . . Ratification of the federal
amendment was rejected by the lower
house of the Connecticut assembly by a
vote of 174 to 83. ... Ratification of the
child labor amendment is expected to
come to early vote in the legislatures of
Massachusetts and Georgia. ... A ratifi-
cation resolution has been favorably re-
ported by a committee of the Delaware
legislature. . . . The Florida legislature,
which convenes in April, is expected to
vote on the question. . . . Hearings on
the amendment have been held by the
Missouri legislature. . . . Ratification
measures have been introduced in the
legislatures of Nebraska, Rhode Island,
South Carolina, Vermont, Tennessee and
Maryland.
Public Welfare
A REPORT of the London County
"^ Council for the year ending March
31, 1936, throws light on the complicated
public welfare system of that great
metropolis. Several authorities deal with
various classifications of need; the Min-
istry of Labor, through the employment
exchanges, administers unemployment in-
surance benefits; the Public Assistance
Authority (national) administers — also
through the employment exchanges — Iran-
112
THE SURVEY
si'tional ("uncovenanted") payments, rig-
idly schematized, to able-bodied unem-
ployed who have exhausted their right to
benefit; the other social insurances are
administered under the Ministry of
Health; while the London County Coun-
cil, serving as a department of public
welfare for the metropolitan area, spreads
a net under the whole scheme. It grants
outdoor relief on a flexible basis to non-
insured and unemployable persons, and to
disqualified persons and those who have
exhausted their claim to insurance and
extended benefit. In addition, it supple-
ments inadequate benefit allowances, and
administers all types of institutions giving
indoor care to dependents.
Outstanding differences in scope and
administration between the London Coun-
ty Council and American departments of
public welfare are found in the great
use made in London of lay committees
whose duties are not only advisory but in
many cases actually administrative. Also
the council has developed a wide range
of institutions for vocational education of
children and retraining of adults. Recent-
ly medical social workers, called in Eng-
land "almoners," have been introduced
into all hospitals operated by the council.
It would appear that these almoners are
responsible for determining ability to pay
and collecting hospital bills to an extent
that greatly reduces their opportunity to
make social adjustments for the patients.
The council as a body may and does
assume legal guardianship of neglected
and illegitimate children, and provides
both institutional and foster-home care.
Assisted emigration to the colonies, once
an important feature of public assistance,
has dropped to negligible proportions, due
to "restrictions imposed by the govern-
ments of British dominions and colonies."
An interesting discussion occurs in the
report of the council on the disqualifica-
tion, under contributory as well as non-
contributory old age pension schemes, of
residents in public institutions, except
while receiving medical or surgical care.
"There is frequently great difficulty," the
council says, "in truly distinguishing be-
tween chronic sickness . . . and infirmity
due to old age ... as regards pensioners
under the contributory scheme, it could be
urged that, having contributed to a fund
for assistance in their old age, they have
a reasonable expectation, though not at
present a legal right, to receive their pen-
sions whether they are obliged to enter
an institution on account of sickness or on
account of infirmity. The allowance of
the pensions would not only make it pos-
sible for the pensioners to receive 'extra
comforts' allowances but would also en-
able them to have the satisfaction of con-
tributing towards the cost of their main-
tenance."
On January 1, 1936, about 12,000 per-
sons were inmates of institutions man-
aged by the council, with 2500 additional
APRIL 1937
persons attending non-residential training
centers. On the same date, about 100,000
persons in Greater London were in re-
ceipt of outdoor relief. The total expen-
diture during the year for this purpose
was about £2 million. Of this, 96 percent
was in cash, as compared with only 76
percent in 1930-31. The total staff num-
bered 4664, more than half being institu-
tional personnel. j. c. c.
They're Still Paupers -Connecti-
cut's Commission to Study the Pauper
Laws has issued its report. At present,
persons unable to obtain citizenship can
never secure residence in a Connecticut
township, and husband, wife and children
in a single family often have separate
legal settlements. The commission does
not attempt to go to the roots of this
situation, but contents itself with recom-
mending that the laws be amended so that
all members of a family will have, so far
as possible, a single settlement. The divi-
sion of dependents into "state charges"
and "town charges" is not to be revised.
"As to town charges," says the report,
"local officials are left to their own de-
vices in caring for their cases." Their
procedure is standardized only when they
expend state funds; although there is an
unusual provision, already in the Con-
necticut law, that township selectmen who
refuse needed relief or give it in inade-
quate amounts are subject to fine. The
report recommends that no town or group
of towns should be permitted to build a
new almshouse without permission from
the State Council of Public Welfare, and
that after 1940 "no person shall be kept
by any town in any almshouse unless he
is too feeble or infirm to maintain him-
self outside."
The commission would revise the laws
relating to public assistance to dependent
« WW
From Urban Workers on Relief, Part 1
Hourly earnings of employed workers on
relief. Each symbol represents 5 cents
children and the blind in accordance with
the Social Security Act, placing care of
the blind under the old age pensions au-
thority, and eliminating township funds
from both programs. It would also trans-
fer to the state the cost and responsibility
for care in institutions of tubercular and
mentally-handicapped paupers, whether
settled or non-settled.
The commission specifically refrains
from recommending that the word "pau-
per" be stricken from the statutes. Any
substitute for this word "would soon
gain a similar connotation," it wearily
comments.
No doubt the commission's claim is jus-
tified that its recommendations, if adopted,
"are likely to eliminate waste of time,
effort and money; to simplify administra-
tion; to eliminate red tape; to leave with
the towns purely poor relief activities
which deal with rapidly changing and
locally peculiar conditions; to centralize
in the state both financial and administra-
tive responsibility only in fields which ex-
perience has shown better left to the
jurisdiction of the larger governmental
unit." But the commission stopped short
of recommending a simplified and inte-
grated administration of public assistance
throughout the state.
Relief
TJRBAN Workers on Relief, by Gladys
L. Palmer and Katherine D. Wood,
in Part I just issued by the Works
Progress Administration's division of so-
cial research, traces typical outlines of
unemployed and underemployed workers
who were on relief in May 1934, shortly
after the termination of the Civil Works
program. Using a sampling method, the
inquiry was extended into seventy-nine
selected cities and covered approximately
202,000 relief households representing
705,000 persons.
The typical unemployed person on ur-
ban relief rolls at the time of the study
was found to be "a white man, thirty-
eight years of age who was head of a
household." Most frequently he was un-
skilled or semi-skilled, had not completed
elementary school, had worked an aver-
age of ten years at his "usual" occupa-
tion, and had lost his last regular job in
the winter of 1931-32.
The average unemployed woman on ur-
ban relief was revealed as five years
younger than the average man in a simi-
lar situation. She had had a slightly bet-
ter education but had worked for a
shorter period at her "usual" occupation,
and had lost her last such job in the fall
of 1932.
Among 235,000 unemployed workers,
there were almost three times as many
men as women. The length of time un-
employed varied considerably with age,
sex, race and occupations. Taking all
occupations together, the men in the re-
113
lief load were found to have been out of
their usual work an average of nine
months longer than the women, and white
workers longer than Negroes. The long-
est average period of unemployment was
among white miners.
The study estimates that from 10 to 12
percent of those studied were on relief
because of inadequate incomes from part
time or full time private jobs.
Increasing age and time unemployed
both were serious handicaps to reemploy-
ment. "Although the majority of unem-
ployed workers on relief stay on relief
for relatively short periods of time, there
appears to be a residual group of long
time unemployed who are the core of a
permanent unemployment problem . . .
who will not qualify for benefits under
the provisions of the Social Security Act.
. . . They are stranded in every sense of
the word," the study concludes.
Swan Song — The final number of the
familiar little gray books containing
monthly reports of Federal Emergency
Relief Administration activities now has
been issued with the explanation that
basic relief statistics will be continued in
the monthly bulletin, General Relief
Statistics, which began in January 1937.
The Division of Research, Statistics and
Records of the FERA, with Emerson
Ross director, is the source of both pub-
lications. Together with a round-up of re-
ports from special studies, the concluding
"gray book" contains a sum-up of total
relief loads from 1933-36, by Mr. Ross
and T. E. Whiting. (Monthly Report of
FERA for June 1936. From superinten-
dent of documents, Washington, D. C.)
Senate —The Murray-Hatch joint reso-
lution which has been introduced into the
U. S. Senate, providing for the appoint-
ment of a national unemployment and re-
lief commission (S.J. Resolution 68) is
in substantial agreement with the stand
of the American Association of Social
Workers calling for appointment of a
non-partisan investigating commission on
the whole question of relief and assistance
problems.
Re-investigation —With the mayoral-
ty election coming next fall, New York
City's Tammany-controlled Board of Al-
dermen has voted to reinvestigate the
city's Emergency Relief Bureau. Two
years ago it sponsored the Stryker in-
quiry which, in the phrase of the day,
"played politics with human misery."
Now the borough president of Queens
has set up the cry that relief is "Com-
munist dominated," and the familiar
charge of "too much overhead" has been
revived. At this writing, it is possible
that Mayor La Guardia may block the
$50,000 appropriation called for.
A group of outstanding private social
agencies, led by the New York City Wel-
fare Council, testified at a public hear-
ing that ERB administrative costs were
inadequate rather than too high. They
endorsed as "modest and reasonable"
ERB requests for increases in certain
items of clients' budgets and for "neces-
sary services without which no family
allowances can be well administered."
Charlotte Carr, executive director of
ERB, pointed to reductions of nearly $11
million in administrative budget and re-
duction of the staff by more than seven
thousand members within the last eigh-
teen months.
The Insurances
IV/IORE than 25 million workers' appli-
cations for participation in the old
age benefits program are now on file with
the Social Security Board. Thousands of
applications are still being received daily.
The Post Office department which han-
dles applications through its 1072 typing
centers before transmitting them to the
board, is sending account number cards to
wage earners within two or three days
after applications are received. New York
State leads by more than a million in the
number of applications received, accord-
ing to a March 12 breakdown made by
the wage records office. Its total of 3,-
800,000 is more than 223 times as large
as that of the state from which the small-
est number has been received, Nevada
with 17,041.
Lump Sums — Regular monthly old age
benefits will be paid to qualified workers
beginning in 1942. Meantime, lump sums
will be paid to those who reach sixty-five
before that date, and to the estates of
those who die. The board has approved
the first eight claims filed for lump sum
benefits. These first benefits out of the
old age reserve account in the Treasury
are small, since they were filed shortly
after the program went into effect Janu-
ary 1. Payments are for three and a half
percent of wages received ; taxes of one
percent of wages had been paid by the
recipients. It is estimated that claims may
be made by 123,000 persons who reach 65
during 1937. The number will probably
grow slowly until 1942, when a down-
ward trend in lump sum payments is fore-
seen. Death claims will probably increase
slowly for a number of years. Actuarial
estimates place the number for 1937 at
about 191,000. This figure is expected to
double by 1980.
England Extends — A voluntary plan,
extending the old age pension and widows'
and orphans' benefit sections of the vast
social security program to cover middle
class workers earning up to £400 a year
will go into operation in Great Britain
next January. Existing compulsory in-
surance covers only manual workers and
others earning less than £250 annually.
The extended scheme will be open to
some two million small shopkeepers,
clerks, clergymen, farmers and others
who have not heretofore had the benefit
of state insurance. For the first year
the age limit will be fifty-five and con-
tributions will be at a flat rate of Is 3d
a week for men, 6d for women. (No
women earning more than £250 annually
will be eligible.) After the first year,
the age limit will be dropped to forty,
and contributions will vary with age,
with a maximum of 2s lid weekly.
Widows' pensions of 10s weekly will be
available after only two years of in-
surance. Old age pensions of 10s a week
will be paid the insured at age sixty-five,
with the same amount to the wives of
men pensioners. Although it is believed
the plan will eventually be self-support-
ing, it will need state aid for a long
period. Assuming that the number of
entrants the first year will be 250,000
men and 100,000 women, the capital cost
is estimated at £23 million, and the an-
nual charge for thirty years, £1,200,000.
Warnings — The Social Security Board
warns employers against distributing un-
authorized questionnaires, purporting to
be required by the board, and designed to
disclose the union affiliation, religion or
other personal affairs of employes. The
only required information is called for
on Form SS-5, which asks a few simple
questions necessary for identification, such
as name, address, sex, color, age, business
address of employer. Letters to the board
indicate that workers have been directed
to return the unauthorized completed
forms to their employers.
The Secretary of the Treasury has is-
sued a warning that it is illegal for busi-
ness firms to add 2 percent to bills and
invoices, listing the price increase as "so-
cial security tax." Social security taxes are
based on payroll, not on gross business.
Under Section 1123 of the Revenue Act
of 1936, such misrepresentation in regard
to a federal tax constitutes a misdemean-
or, punishable "by a fine of not more than
$1000 or by imprisonment not exceeding
one year, or both."
State Legislation — Unemployment
compensation laws have recently been en-
acted by Arkansas and Wyoming, and the
Arkansas measure has already been ap-
proved. The thirty-seven state laws now
approved by the Social Security Board
cover an estimated total of 18 million
workers. Only eleven states and two ter-
ritories now remain without unemploy-
ment compensation laws. In all but two
of these — Florida and Illinois — measures
are pending before state legislatures, and
a special session of the Florida legislature
will soon convene.
Amendments to state unemployment
compensation provisions have been or are
being considered by twenty-eight of the
states already having approved laws.
114
THE SURVEY
Many of these amendments seek to change
the basis for computing payment of bene-
fits. In an earlier stage of such legisla-
tion, it was often provided that benefits
be based on past employment. More re-
cent legislation takes earnings as the basis.
This has the advantage of simplifying rec-
ord keeping and administration, by mak-
ing the quarterly payroll the only essen-
tial record. Alabama has already passed
such an amendment, and similar propos-
als are being considered in New York and
other states.
Just To Make It Harder- — To de-
cide who does and who doesn't come un-
der the Social Security Act is no simple
rule of thumb matter. For instance: Are
radio performers employed by networks,
booking agents, sponsors, or by their own
orchestra leaders? Are they independent
contractors? Revenue authorities are not
attempting to make a general ruling,
Variety reports, because the facts differ
in each case. . . . The Bureau of Internal
Revenue has decided that caddies are em-
ployes of individual golfers, not of the
golf clubs. Senator Duffy maintains that
this also applies to bowling alley pin
boys, and that as employes of the bowl-
ers, not the alley management, they have
no social security rights. . . . Persons em-
ployed on fox farms or other kinds of fur
farms are employed in industry, accord-
ing to a recent opinion by Joseph Chavez,
Utah attorney general, who holds that
"unless a fox could be defined as a live-
stock animal, workers employed in fox
breeding could not be classified as agri-
cultural laborers." . . . Similarly the oper-
ation of fish hatcheries, and establish-
ments for commercial flower-growing,
fall outside the "agricultural labor" ex-
emptions of the Social Security Act.
Administration — Bill collectors, de-
tectives, Department of Justice Agents,
wives seeking overdue alimony need not
apply to the records division of the Social
Security Board. The board seeks to
make clear to the public that no outsider
will be permitted to inspect its files, and
no information concerning any social se-
curity account will be divulged except to
the person to whom it belongs. . . . On
the other hand, the board invites in-
quiries from those wishing information on
the status of their accounts. During Jan-
uary, an average of 5082 persons a day
wrote the records division for guidance
on social security problems. A special cor-
respondence division deals with such in-
quiries, many of which could be more
quickly and efficiently handled at the field
offices. Part of the board's educational
campaign is devoted to urging citizens to
get in touch with local authorities, instead
of writing Washington or Baltimore.
The Social Security Board has recently
ruled that federal grants for administer-
ing state unemployment compensation
laws may be used only for the expenses
of the specific agency administering the
state law. Exceptions to this ruling may
be made only where it is the regular prac-
tice of the state to provide funds for over-
head agencies by making charges upon the
state's operating agencies for such over-
head services, or where an overhead
agency has taken on distinct additional
duties which are an integral part of the
unemployment compensation administra-
tion. This ruling is consistent with the
practice of other federal agencies admin-
istering grants to states, including the
U. S. Office of Education, the Bureau of
Public Roads, and the Public Health Ser-
vice. Grants under the Social Security Act
to cover costs of administering unemploy-
ment compensation laws have totaled al-
most $6,200,000 to date.
As of March 1, the unemployment
trust fund in the U. S. Treasury had re-
ceived deposits in twenty-four state ac-
counts which, with interest, amounted to
$115,462,712.62.
An eagle with wings outspread is the
symbol of "protection" on the seal which
appears on official documents and publi-
cations of the Social
Security Board. The
ten benefits of the
Social Security Act
are depicted by the
ten bars in the shield
below. The forty
eight stars above
stand for the forty
eight states. The flag on the left is a
composite state flag ; the one on the right,
the national banner. Interlocked behind
the shield, they indicate federal-state
cooperation.
WPA
TV/TARCH came in lion-ish with storm
centers around the Works Progress
Administration program, but at this writ-
ing seems likely to go out somewhat mol-
lified. The month began with more than
two million on WPA rolls and the num-
ber increasing. (The up-to-now peak for
WPA rolls had been reached March 1.
1936, with more than three million.) A
cut in WPA of 600,000 before June had
been foreshadowed by various statements
in the press. Then came orders to be car-
ried out by April 15 requiring: that not
more than 5 percent of all employes of
WPA, relief and non-relief, receive wages
in excess of the security scale; and that
no more than 5 percent of workers not
certified as in need of relief be employed
on WPA projects. The orders, of course,
meant layoffs. A few minor exceptions are
allowed, but with the proviso that "all
future exemptions from either ruling be
made only with authorization of the fed-
eral administration."
Governors of six industrial states —
Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
Rhode Island, New York and Wiscon-
sin protested any cuts in WPA which
would outpace reemployment and in-
crease the relief burdens of the states
and localities. Mayors of twenty-six east-
ern cities asked that Congress provide a
minimum appropriation of $2,200,000 to
carry WPA through 1937-38. In New-
York City, rather than see the rolls cut
beyond the effects of the "5 percent non-
relief" order, a substantial increase in
the city's contribution was arranged.
At this writing, WPA's future beyond
June is still undetermined, but President
Roosevelt has assured the six protesting
governors of "sympathetic consideration"
and a conference soon after his return
from his Warm Springs, Ga. sojourn.
Harry Hopkins Says — Federal
WPA Administrator Hopkins has given
strong evidence that he favors a perma-
nent WPA. In his recent pamphlet, The
Realities of Unemployment, discussing
what the government can do to help work
out "an American answer to unemploy-
ment" he says: 'The federal government
can continue to provide a program of
public works like the WPA for employ-
able workers who cannot find jobs," and
"cannot refuse responsibility for provid-
ing jobs to those whom private industry
does not hire."
In a letter to The Survey, Adminis-
trator Hopkins commented on the experi-
ences of WPA workers during the Feb-
ruary floods: "I always like to see WPA
workers under fire in an emergency. That
is the time when they can give the best
answer to the people who keep calling
them loafers, and whether they realize
it or not, their answer is always magnifi-
cent. . . . Perhaps the hardest work of
all remains to be done. . . ."
Impedimenta -New restrictions, which
last year's Louisiana state legislature
placed upon the operations of WPA in
that state have now gone into effect. Na-
tional regulations of WPA provide that
state and local offices are responsible for
determining what projects shall be sub-
mitted to Washington for approval and
what undertaken, once approved. Now, in
Louisiana, a newly established State Plan-
ning Commission must give preliminary
approval before proposed projects are sub-
mitted to local WPA offices, and must
again pass on them, before they can be
sent on to Washington. Then, though
approved by President Roosevelt, a pro-
ject cannot be inaugurated in Louisiana
until the new commission consents.
Disaster Loans— Directors of the Re-
construction Finance Corporation have
set up a Disaster Loan Corporation,
staffed by members of the RFC staff. Co-
operating with WPA and the Red Cross,
the disaster loans will aid those suffering
from "losses they can ill afford to
APRIL 1937
115
stand." The corporation will have no
hard and fast rules as to terms or secur-
ity. Loans will be made "in accordance
with the ability of the borrower to re-
pay, and secured where the applicant is
able to give security," it is announced. In-
terest will be charged at 3 percent a year,
with certain arrangements and terms
adapted to the requirements of the appli-
cant, but with a view to eventual repay-
ment. No money is to be loaned to bor-
rowers able to get money through "nor-
mal channels."
Rulings —Recent WPA administrative
orders ruled that employable widows who
have been dropped from WPA rolls and
are not receiving social security benefits
will be reinstated at once ; that New
York City's extensive Federal Arts Pro-
jects shall be administered directly from
Washington.
Young Volunteers
JUNIOR LEAGUES in thirty-five
cities of the United States and Canada
contributed to a symposium on housing
and slum clearance which is published in
the April issue of the national Junior
League Magazine. Material was gath-
ered through an "editor" in each local
league, with members as "reporters" in-
vestigating and photographing housing
conditions in their own communities. Be-
sides producing a significant picture of
housing through Junior League eyes, the
symposium stimulated a lively interest in
the subject on the part of members.
Local Activity — Special interest clubs
for school children have been arranged
by the Children's Museum of Hartford,
Conn., through the help of the Junior
League which is paying the salary of a
group worker on the museum staff, who
directs the clubs. . . . The Newburgh,
N. Y. League is financing a study of local
social agencies, under the auspices of the
Newburgh Community Chest. Paul Ben-
jamin, executive of the Buffalo, N. Y.
Council of Social Agencies, is directing
the study, with the aid of a committee
appointed by the chest. ... In her few
months of service, Mary Frances Shel-
burne, new placement secretary of the
Winston-Salem, N. C. League has de-
veloped opportunities for volunteer serv-
ice in local social agencies and has under-
taken a study of cases in the leagues'
Home for Incurables. The league home
has served as a demonstration of need.
Now a new county home has been opened
which, it is hoped, will take over all eli-
gible cases, so that the league home may
be dosed.
Collegiate — After giving three summer
training institutes for student volunteer
workers, the Children's Aid Society of
Detroit feels that it has evolved a plan
with definite values. Students follow a
strict program of instruction and super-
vised field work. After a two months' in-
tensive course, the society reports, they
show definite progress. Several neighbor-
ing universities allow credits toward their
degrees to students who attend the insti-
tute. (Full information from Leon W.
Frost, Detroit Children's Aid Society.)
Library News
INFORMATION on public affairs will
be made available in homeopathic doses
to library patrons of thirty cities during
the next few months, through a project
sponsored jointly by the U. S. Office of
Education, the American Library Asso-
ciation, and the Public Affairs Commit-
tee. More than 600 pamphlets on ques-
tions of the day have been furnished the
public library in each city, where they will
be brought to public attention through
displays, newspaper articles, and so on.
A centralized purchasing plan will sim-
plify quantity purchases of any pamphlet
needed for group use. Half the partici-
pating cities have federal public forums
in action; the other half lack such for-
ums but have many other groups taking
active interest in public affairs.
Trailer-Library — A trailer-library is
the invention of Ralph Shaw, librarian
of Gary, Ind., confronted with the prob-
lem of providing books for readers on
the outskirts of a city. More than 17,000
readers, heretofore without convenient ac-
cess to Gary libraries, can now look for-
ward to having the trailer branch library
bring 1500 or more books within easy
reach once a week, remaining from a half
day to a full day at each of its eight
stops. According to Mr. Shaw, the cost
of trailer book service is considerably less
than the rental of a single stationary li-
brary of comparable size. A fleet of these
inexpensive trailer branches may some
day be operated by large libraries, in Mr.
Shaw's opinion, either for service such as
Gary is now offering or for even more
direct service from house to house.
State Aid — Governor Davey has signed
a bill providing $150,000 for state aid
to public libraries in Ohio for the coming
biennium. This is $50,000 more than the
state aid granted in 1935, and will make
possible steady development of the plan
on which Paul T. Noon, state librarian,
and the Ohio Library Commission are
working, to place books within conveni-
ent reach of all the people of the state.
In 1935, nearly 500,000 Ohio residents
were without a public library. State
grants provide not so much for the estab-
lishment of new libraries, as for the
extension of the services of existing li-
braries to unserved Ohio residents. . . .
The Arkansas legislature has passed a
bill appropriating $100,000 for the state
library commission and state aid to li-
braries. With 85 percent of its people
without access to a public library, Arkan-
sas has stood for several years second
from the bottom of the list of states in
its provision of library service. Only West
Virginia has stood lower. ... A bill
presented to the Michigan legislature by
the state library association would pro-
vide permanent state aid for library ser-
vice amounting to $1,250,000 annually.
At present there are 1,100,000 people in
Michigan who do not have access to a
public library.
After the Floods — Damage to books
and library buildings during the recent
floods are summarized in the current
Bulletin of the American Library Asso-
ciation in reports from West Virginia,
Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois. Most
libraries apparently stand on high ground,
and the chief damage seems to have been
through flooded basements. This occa-
sionally meant, as in Louisville, damage
to valuable documents and bound maga-
zines. Other libraries were not so for-
tunate, as in Portsmouth and Ripley,
Ohio, where the buildings were "com-
pletely flooded," with serious damage to
books, records and buildings. In Indiana,
where fourteen counties were flooded, the
estimated library loss is 54,000 books, all
the records in two libraries, building and
equipment damage of $39,000. The re-
port points out that "libraries not them-
selves flooded will suffer a loss of the
books that were in circulation in flooded
homes. Collectively this will reach a large
figure." It is hoped that WPA workers
will be available to assist in restoring
water-soaked books and buildings.
Child Welfare
ADVICE and consultation on health
•^^ and medical programs are now
offered by the Child Welfare League of
America to its member agencies. Dr. Flor-
ence A. Browne, Detroit social worker
and pediatrician has been added to the
national staff to develop the new service
for which funds were made available near-
ly a year ago through a four-year appro-
priation from the Commonwealth Fund.
[See The Survey, June 15, 1936, page
184.] Standard practices will be worked
out and help given to agencies on their
health problems.
The league also is carrying on "a quest
for information" on local agency activi-
ties and practices, in order to answer
queries on "how others are doing it."
Sybil Foster, field secretary in charge
of the inquiry, explains that its aim is
"not to find the one accepted way," but
rather to search out and pool current ex-
perience— what actually is being done,
why does it work or not work in a given
situation? Subjects being explored include
plans for home finding, intake methods
and ways of educating the community as
to necessary safeguards in child adoption.
116
New Committee— Katherine Lenroot,
chief of the U. S. Children's Bureau, has
announced the appointment of an advis-
ory committee on Training Schools for
Socially Maladjusted Children. Roy L.
McLaughlin of Meriden, Conn, is chair-
man and Elsa Castendyck, director of the
bureau's delinquency division, will serve
as secretary. The new committee is the
result of plans made at the last National
Conference of Juvenile Agencies. It will
have functional subcommittees on object-
ives and studies, an informational and
statistical service and an overall execu-
tive committee. The aim is to develop
not rigid standards but rather a flexible
philosophy or set of principles for institu-
tions, to serve "as a guide for evaluation
and continuing development."
Against War— Answering a question-
naire from the Children's Aid Society of
New York, 10,000 of the city's school
boys and girls ranked war last and G-
men first in checking their choices of
movie themes. The questionnaires were
part of the society's study of after-school
activities.
Atlanta Boys— A survey of 264 Negro
boys called "typical" of Atlanta, Georgia's
eleven-to-eighteen-year-olds has been com-
pleted by students of the Atlanta School
of Social Work, with Sarah Ginsberg
directing the research. Of the group stud-
ied, about 55 percent were native-born
Atlantans, living with both parents. Near-
ly half came from families of four mem-
bers or less; over 70 percent lived in one
family homes; and 95 percent in frame
houses. However, only 2.6 percent of the
homes had furnace heat and 46 percent
were lighted by kerosene lamps. Work-
ing mothers in some cases left home as
early as 6:30 a.m. and often did not re-
turn till after 7 p.m.
Only nine boys admitted smoking and
nineteen that they ever drank wine, whis-
key or beer. Some 93 percent claimed at-
tendance at a church, but, the report
points out, most of them would hesitate
to answer "no" to this question. One out
of five mentioned activity in a church
club.
In discussing futures, the largest group
of boys expressed an ambition to be doc-
tors, with mail carriers and clerks the
next most popular vocations. Eighty-nine
now work after school and Saturdays,
mostly as errand or newsboys.
Questioning revealed that most of the
boys felt dissatisfied with conditions of
Negro life in Atlanta and were conscious
of race discrimination, especially in law
courts and in employment.
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
If You're Told to "ALKALIZE"
Try this Remarkable "PHILLIPS" Way
On every side today people are
being urged to alkalize their
stomach. And thus to ease the
symptoms of "acid indigestion,"
nausea and stomach upsets.
To gain quick alkalization, just
do this: Take two teaspoons of
Phillips' Milk of Magnesia 30
minutes after eating. Or, take
two Phillips' Milk of Magnesia
tablets, which have the same
antacid effect.
Relief comes almost at once —
usually in a few minutes.
Nausea, "gas," fullness after eat-
ing and "acid indigestion" pains
leave.
Try this way. When you
see that any box or bottle
you accept is clearly
marked "Genuine Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia." A
big box of the tablets, to
carry with you, costs
only 25c.
MILK OF MAGNESIA
MERCUROCHROME, H.W. & D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodlum)
After a thorough investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
(1935)
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Request
HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md.
page 279.] According to Dr. Bernard
Sachs, director of the project, an earlier
program of child neurology research, un-
dertaken at the Neurological Institute of
New York, encouraged the trustees of
the foundation to launch a program "be-
yond the limits of any one institution,
city or country." Stipends — scholarships
or otherwise — will be awarded to chosen
applicants proposing original work that
promises to be fruitful of results. The
three main channels of pursuit, according
to the comprehensive program of the pro-
ject, include: organic and functional dis-
eases of the nervous system in children,
neuroses and psychoses of early life, and
social, personality and home problems.
A special council for the work is made
up of the director, seven medical experts
and two laymen.
Against Tuberculosis
of
Friedsam Studies — Important find-
ings in child neurology are expected to re-
sult from a new national and interna-
tional research program announced by
the Friedsam Foundation early last
fall. [See The Survey, September 1936,
DFSULTS of a two-year study
tuberculosis are among the first find-
New York Tuberculosis and Health As-
sociation that there is an acute need for
more beds for tuberculosis patients in the
city's hospitals.
The most liberal provision among the
large cities in the United, States, he said,
is two beds for each death from tubercu-
losis in the year; the least, one bed per
death. Addition of 2500 beds for tuber-
culosis patients would give New York
City a ratio of 1.7 beds per annual death
from tuberculosis, while Detroit now has
2.3, Milwaukee 2, Buffalo 2.1 and Seattle
2.1 beds.
While Negroes make up only 5 per-
cent of the population of New York City,
they constitute 15 percent of the patients
in tuberculosis hospitals and 25 percent
of the city's deaths from the disease, the
survey showed.
Attendance at the association's clinics
increased more than 8 percent in 1936
over 1935, reflecting the increase which
last year interrupted years of steady re-
duction in tuberculosis in New York City.
ings to be released by the vast Hospital
Survey of New York. Dr. Haven
Emerson, director of the study and pro-
fessor of public health practice at the
Columbia University School of Medicine,
told the recent annual meeting of the
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
117
Schools and Colleges — Five state
institutions of higher education in Mis-
sissippi, which together enroll about five
thousand students, are cooperating with
the State Tuberculosis Association in a
plan to combat tuberculosis among col-
lege students. A trained clinician will give
all students tuberculin tests and make
further X-ray examination when indi-
cated. The costs will be paid by student
health fees.
The two-year-old Tuberculosis Com-
mittee of the American Association of
School Physicians is working to devise
standard methods of attacking tuberculo-
sis among school children. The committee
stresses the importance of tuberculosis
surveys for the children of any commun-
ity and suggests reducing costs by using
rolls of paper film for general X-ray
exposures with celluloid films for fur-
ther X-ray follow-up, when indicated.
The committee reports that this method,
which has been tried extensively in east-
ern localities, reduces costs enough to
make "chest films" available to practically
everyone.
Case Histories— Tuberculosis is no
respecter of persons, said the New York
Times editorially. It caused the deaths of
Robert Louis Stevenson, Keats, Byron,
Moliere, Balzac, Dostoievsky, Gorki,
Kant, Schiller, Chopin, Spinoza, Christy
Mathewson, Dr. Trudeau, and Ring
Lardner. ... In an article in The Cru-
sader, publication of the Wisconsin Anti-
Tuberculosis Association, Dr. Frank L,
Jennings gave the history of tuberculosis
in one family. "Because of needless neg-
lect in discovering and checking tubercu-
losis in the father of this family, Hen-
nepin County and the State of Minnesota
already have spent $23,058 on his chil-
dren and grandchildren for medical treat-
ment and hospital care alone."
The Public's Health
TPHE Women's Field Army of the
American Society for the Control of
Cancer plans to make its blue shield with
white, caduceus-entwined sword and scar-
cently launched the women's army in
forty states, a future program has been
proposed to include: permanent educa-
tional bureaus using modern techniques
of advertising and popular education;
scholarship and fellowship funds for can-
cer study and research ; compilation and
follow-up of records on results obtained
by treatment; and financing travel costs
to bring indigent patients to hospitals.
Diabetes — At the New York Diabetes
Association summer camp, Cornwall,
N. Y., diabetic boys and girls between
eight and twelve years old vacation under
medical supervision and also receive
training in procedures such as diet calcu-
lation, insulin administration, urine test-
ing. Most of the children come from the
diabetes clinics of New York City. Phy-
sicians volunteer their services and sup-
port of the camp is voluntary.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, a special commit-
tee on diabetes has been formed by the
Public Health Federation in cooperation
with the Academy of Medicine. An infor-
mation bureau for physicians and the
public, a study of the morbidity and
mortality of diabetes and general public
health education are planned.
The Prendergast Preventorium in
Mattapan, Mass, teaches diabetic chil-
dren from six to fourteen years old. They
have regular school work while receiving
treatment. Diet, insulin and exercise are
carefully watched and the children are
reported to find their routines less irk-
some when taken en masse.
Vitamins — "Eat and see" says the Illi-
nois Health Messenger in a recent issue
which explains that "shortage of vitamin
A in the diet reduces the ability to see
well in the twilight and darkness. More
accidents with motor vehicles occur dur-
ing the late afternoon and early evening
than at any other time of day. Lack of
good vision undoubtedly plays a part.
. . ." Evidence is cited that a well-balanced
diet, and plenty of vitamin A may have
importance in avoiding traffic accidents.
. . . Vitamin C is still Vitamin C no mat-
ter what kind of oranges you choose to
eat. Also, there is slight difference in
vitamin content despite contentions of
advertisers, said the Journal of the
American Medical Association recently.
Professional
let flames as familiar as the double-
barred cross of the National Tuberculo-
sis Association and the emblem of the
American Red Cross. Contingent on the
success of Enlistment Week, which re-
May 23-30 to Indianapolis!
Biggest and best-yet National Con-
ference of Social Work, or so advance
billings read. The further information
that it will "cover more ground than in
many a year," takes on added meaning in
conjunction with the conference map of
Indianapolis, showing relative locations
of convention hall and hotels. Of first im-
portance for prospective 1937 conference-
goers would appear to be early hotel
reservations and good feet.
The Murat Temple, which will be
convention headquarters, is reported to be
fine and spacious. Besides meeting rooms,
it contains one of the city's best theatres.
An entire floor will be equipped as a
lounge and another devoted to exhibits,
registration, consultation and information
services.
This will be the sixty-fourth annual
meeting of the conference, the first in In-
dianapolis since 1906 when there were
2800 members. Statistics for this year
show a total of 7712 conference member-
ships— individual and agency — of which
480 are sustaining and 482 institutional.
The 1937 program will be built on a
framework of five general sections: so-
cial case work, chairman William H.
Savin, Washington ; social group work,
chairman J. Edward Sproul, New York
City; community organization, chairman
Dr. Ellen C. Potter, Trenton, N. J.; so-
cial action, chairman Mary Anderson,
Washington, D. C. ; and public welfare
administration, chairman Grace Abbott,
Chicago. In addition, seven special com-
mittees and more than fifty associate
groups will meet concurrently. More than
300 daily sessions have been scheduled.
At the opening general session, Sunday
evening, May 23, Edith Abbott of Chi-
cago will deliver her presidential address.
The final session will be the "conference
luncheon" on Saturday, May 30. Other
speakers at general sessions, as now an-
nounced, will include: Charles P. Taft,
II, of Cincinnati; Senator Robert F.
Wagner of New York, and Governor
Frank Murphy of Michigan.
The nominating committee has pre-
sented the following slate for 1937-38:
president, Solomon Lowenstein, New
York; first vice-president, Grace L.
Coyle, Cleveland ; second vice-president,
Forrester B. Washington, Atlanta; third
vice-president, Ruth Fitzsimons, Seattle.
Indianapolis is a crossroads city for
practically all forms of transportation —
major airlines, railroads, highways. Some
railroads are offering to those who can
drum up a group of twenty-five, travel-
ing together, a special round-trip rate of
a cent and a half a mile and a coach
to themselves. Details vary and must be
worked out with the local railroad agent.
Hugh McK. Landon is chairman and
C. C. Ridge, executive secretary of In-
dianapolis' local committee on arrange-
ments.
Sidelight^A significant "by-finding" of
the recent delegate conference of the
American Association of Social Workers
in Washington was the list of queries "on
which no agreement could be reached."
Among these, as listed by the report com-
mittee, were: "Is relief by categories to
be preferred to generalized relief? Should
full budget relief be given instead of sub-
118
THE SURVEY
sidles to sub-standard wages? Should ad-
ministrators of social work have had pre-
vious training in the practice of social
work? Is the AASW in favor of setting
up definitive standards for rating agencies
on their personnel practice? On what
criteria should professional social action
rest?"
New Year Book— The 1937 Social
Work Year Book, the first to make its
bow under the new editor, Russell H.
Kurtz, has been issued by the Russell
Sage Foundation. From "Adoption"
through "Zoning," it is packed with ma-
terial showing the great variety and extent
of 1937 social services.
A feature of the new Year Book is its
discussion of the Social Security Act and
the results already observable. Desirable
changes, criticisms and significance of the
Act, are included in an article by Eveline
Burns. The section on crime and crime
prevention, including material by Thors-
ten Sellin and Sanford Bates, and that
on mental diseases by Dr. George S.
Stevenson reveal darker sides of today's
picture. (1937 Social Work Year Book.
Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.)
Cash Prizes — In connection with plans
for the next International Congress for
Education in the Family, a prize compe-
tition has been arranged, with three
prizes of a thousand francs each for
the best reports of research in this field.
Plans are being made for the Congress
by a special commission which meets in
Paris tne week of May 14, a period
designated as "international week on
family, home-making and rural prob-
lems." Information regarding the com-
petition from P. De Vuyst, International
Commission for Education in the Family,
22 Avenue de 1'Yser, Brussels, Belgium.
Pursuit of Knowledge — Ford ham
University School of Social Service, New
York City, has introduced a new course
relating to the social security program,
part of a general expansion of the school's
curriculum. . . . The New York Uni-
versity School of Education this year
offers a course on the artistic, education-
al and social aspects of the motion pic-
ture, given by Frederick M. Thrasher.
Special summer courses to train teach-
ers and supervisors of sight-saving classes
will be offered at Western Reserve Uni-
versity, Cleveland, Ohio, June 21-JuIy
30; Wayne University, Detroit, Mich.,
June 29-August 6; and at Teachers Col-
lege, Columbia University, July 12-Aug-
ust 20. Advanced classes also will be
offered at Western Reserve and at Teach-
ers College. Full information from the
National Society for the Prevention of
Blindness, 50 West 50 St., New York.
The second annual Seminar on Social
Work in the Soviet Union, directed by
Walter West of New York, will sail on
the S.S. Berengaria July 3. Membership
will be limited to social workers and stu-
dents of social work. Complete informa-
tion from Edutravel, 55 Fifth Avenue,
New York.
New York University, New York, and
the State Reconstruction Home in West
Haverstraw, N. Y., have been chosen as
training centers for nurses and other pub-
lic health workers who wish to take
courses in reconstruction work for the
physically handicapped, in connection with
social security services to crippled chil-
dren. States participating in these ser-
vices are sending trainees. The course
now in session closes June 18; the next
will be given July 6-October 8. Informa-
tion from George G. Deaver, New York
University, Washington Square Branch.
The School of Applied Sciences at
Western Reserve University, Cleveland,
Ohio, will hold an institute on group
work, May 31-June 19. Courses are de-
signed for experienced professional work-
ers. Information from W. I. Newstetter,
institute director, at the university.
I See by the Papers —For a year a
committee of the Chicago Social Work
Publicity Council "sat waist deep in clip-
pings, and for another year wrestled with
conclusions," to produce the report, I
See by the Papers. News of Chicago so-
cial agencies which "made the papers"
during four sample months was clipped,
measured, classified and tabulated. The
committee was confronted with the sur-
prising total of five thousand clippings —
some 27,000 column inches — mentioning
800 different agencies. There was not a
single unfriendly notice ; three were
classed as "indifferent." Only in dealing
with public welfare work, involving poli-
tics, did the papers show bias, and not
always there.
The committee has analyzed what these
columns have said, how they have said
it, and what the newspapers think of so-
cial work publicity in a pamphlet which
is itself a first rate publicity job. (Lim-
ited supply available; price $1 from the
council, 203 North Wabash Avenue, Chi-
cago.)
Branching Out — The Deering Com-
munity Center, Deering N. H., a 120-
acre rural property including thirty
buildings valued around $150,000 has
been given to Boston University for use
as a training center for the division of
social and religious work. By the terms of
the gift, the center must be used to train
students, particularly in summer sessions,
and must serve the children and youths
of its own community. The university
plans to prepare students for work in
rural churches, particularly on staffs of
large parishes, and to give some general
courses in rural social work. The center
has an ideal "summer resort" location.
The Kansas Conference of Social Work
now has its first paid secretary, Lulu
Busby of Topeka. She is listing all the
social workers of the state, with their
qualifications, preliminary to a conference
plan for state registration such as Cali-
fornia now uses. Miss Busby also is serv-
ing as an information "center" to keep
social workers informed on state public
welfare legislation, now a crucial issue in
Kansas.
People and Things
TPHE new secretary of the New York
State Department of Labor is Rose
Schneiderman who succeeds the late
Maud O'Farrell Schwartz. Miss Schnei-
derman, president of the New York Wo-
men's Trade Union
League since 1917,
began her labor
union experience in
1903 when, as a
cap maker, she
helped to organize
a branch of the
United Cloth Hat
and Cap Makers.
Since 1907 her major concern has been
labor organizing, chiefly in the needle
trades. From 1926-32 she was president
of the National Women's Trade Union
League and in 1933 was the only woman
member appointed to the Labor Advisory
Board by President Roosevelt.
Events — May 1 will be "May Day —
Child Health Day." This observance,
now becoming a tradition, was fostered
by the late American Child Health Asso-
ciation and continues under sponsorship
of the U. S. Children's Bureau and by
presidential proclamation. With its famil-
iar slogan, "Health protection for every
child," its concrete objective is "to pro-
mote the extension of year-round child
health services in every community, in-
cluding services for physically handi-
capped children." Suggestions for May
Day programs and publicity may be had
on application to May Day chairmen of
state health departments. . . . The last
week of April has been designated "Bet-
ter Health Week" for Bronx Borough of
New York City. It will be celebrated by
exhibits at the county court house, special
lectures and movies, sponsored by local
health agencies. . . . The New Jersey
State Organization for Public Health
Nursing will meet April 23 in Asbury
Park. Frank Kingdon, president of the
New Jersey State Conference of Social
Work will be a principal speaker. . . .
The Association of Western Hospitals
and allied groups will meet April 12-15
in Los Angeles. . . . The Eastern Region-
al Conference of the Child Welfare
League of America will be held April 30-
May 1 in New York, instead of on the
dates previously announced.
Alumni of the New York School of
Social Work will hold their spring con-
ference May 6, at the school. . . . The
APRIL 1937
119
National Congress of Parents and Teach-
ers will be May 3-6 in Richmond, Va.
. . . The National Federation of Settle-
ments meets in Bloomington, Ind., May
19-23, dovetailing conveniently with the
National Conference of Social Work. . . .
A world convention of the Women's
Christian Temperance Union is planned
for June 3-8 in Washington, D. C. . . .
The Jewish Welfare Board will meet
April 24 in New York City. . . . The
American Association for Social Security
is holding its annual conference April 9-
10 in New York City.
The New York State Conference of
State, County and City Committees on
Tuberculosis and Public Health, of the
State Charities Aid Association will be
held in New York City May 11-13. . . .
The National Recreation Congress will
convene May 17-21, Atlantic City, N. J.
NOPHN Anniversary —A plan for
headquarters consultants on mental hy-
giene, industrial nursing and control of
syphilis has been set up by the National
Organization for Public Health Nursing,
contingent on the success of the 1937 Sil-
ver Anniversary campaign. As a result
of aroused public interest in a syphilis
control program, says Dorothy Deming,
NOPHN director, the public health nurse
increasingly is called upon to participate,
in the role of community health teacher.
"All these questions need expert hand-
ling and guidance," said Miss Deming,
discussing the new plans. A mental hy-
giene consultant was included in the or-
ganization's staff in pre-depression days.
New Jobs— Katherine Faville, now as-
sociate dean of the Frances Payne Bol-
ton School of Nursing at Western Re-
serve University, has been appointed di-
rector of the Henry Street Visiting Nurse
Service of New York beginning in the
early fall. Elizabeth Mackenzie who has
been acting director since the resignation
of Marguerite Wales, now with the W.
K. Kellogg Foundation, will continue as
associate director of nurses. Miss Faville
brings to her job a wide executive and
educational experience.
Resigned— Henry P. Seidemann has
left the Social Security Board where he
directed the federal old age benefits bu-
reau of the board. On "loan" from the
Brookings Institution, Mr. Seidemann
asked to be relieved in order to return to
Brookings. He is succeeded at the board
by LeRoy Hodges, economist and since
1924 managing director of the Virginia
State Chamber of Commerce. . . . Stan-
ley D. Nobel, secretary of the Wisconsin
Society for Mental Hygiene, has resigned
to become an industrial personnel man-
ager. . . . James A. Nolan has left the
Washington, D. C., Council of Social
Agencies, where he was secretary of the
department of family and child welfare,
to become the first director of the Wash-
ington Criminal Justice Association.
Turnover— Natalie W. Linderholm,
since 1931 secretary of the Boston Fam-
ily Welfare Society, now chairman of the
national Social Work Publicity Council,
has come to the Russell Sage Founda-
tion staff as assistant to Mary Routzahn
in the department of social work interpre-
tation. . . . Edward W. Harding, for-
merly director of the Kansas City Civic
Research Bureau, has been appointed as-
sociate administrative consultant of the
Public Administration Service of Boston.
. . . The Rev. Walter K. Morley is the
new executive secretary of the social
service department and associate director
of the Cathedral Shelter of the Episco-
pal church, diocese of Chicago.
Dr. Emery E. Olson, who has been in
Washington organizing training for fed-
eral employes at the American University,
will return next year to the University
of Southern California where he is dean
of the School of Government.
Reorganization — Key administrative
appointments have been announced for
the reorganized New York State Depart-
ment of Welfare which on July 1 will
absorb the state's Temporary Emergency
Relief Administration. Frederick I. Dan-
iels, chairman of TERA, becomes first
deputy commissioner in the reorganized
department; Mary L. Gibbons, former
head of the New York City Emergency
Relief Bureau, will be deputy commis-
sioner in charge of New York City;
and Clarence E. Ford, now in the depart-
ment, deputy commissioner in charge of
non-relief social services. It is expected
that most TERA employes will be tak-
en into the new department, following
civil service examinations.
News Notes — The Coralie Noyes
Kenfield Scholarship, to train teachers of
hard of hearing adults, has been estab-
lished in honor of the late Miss Kenfield
of San Francisco, who was widely known
as a teacher of lip reading. The Ameri-
can Society for the Hard of Hearing is
trustee for the Kenfield Memorial Fund.
Applications for the 1937 scholarship
should be made during April to the Teach-
ers' Committee of the society at 1537 35
Street, NW, Washington, D. C.
Richard S. Childs has been appointed
to the New York State Housing Board,
succeeding Louis Pink, now state com-
missioner of insurance. Long active in
civic affairs, Mr. Childs is known to
"housers" for his work as chairman of
the New York City Slum Clearance
Committee.
The National Housing Association, a
pioneer in the field, has "liquidated" and
turned over its records, files and infor-
mation to the Central Housing Commit-
tee, Interior Building, Washington, D. C.
Lawrence Veiller, since its beginnings
secretary of the association and editor of
Housing will devote his time to the Citi-
zens' Crime Commission of New York
State, a new organization of which he is
president. The commission springs from
the work of the now disbanded criminal
courts committee of the New York Char-
ity Organization Society.
Margaret Morriss, dean of Pembroke
College at Brown University, is the new
president of the American Association
of University Women.
The twentieth anniversary celebration
of the National Association for Travel-
ers Aid and Transient Service will be
held April 22-24, with three days of
lively discussion, distinguished speakers
and social events.
Deaths
HTHE death of Dr. William A. White,
in early March, brought to a close
the career of one of this country's most
distinguished and beloved public ser-
vants. Practically all of Dr. White's
professional life was spent in administra-
tion in public hospitals for mental ill-
ness, first as assistant physician at the
Binghamton, N. Y., State Hospital, and
since 1903 as superintendent of St. Eliza-
beth's at Washington, D.C. Despite these
heavy responsibilities, Dr. White found
time and energy for both professional
and public leadership in questions asso-
ciated with his specialty. He was widely
known as a medical educator and as the
author of books distinguished not only
for their specific scientific contribution
but also for their insight into broad so-
cial questions. He had served as presi-
dent of the American Psychiatric Associa-
tion, the American Psychoanalytic Asso-
ciation, the Washington Institute of Men-
tal Hygiene, the Social Hygiene Society
of the District of Columbia, the Wash-
ington, D.C. Academy of Medicine, and
the first International Congress on Men-
tal Hygiene. Few professional fields have
undergone so rapid and varied a develop-
ment in the past forty years as that with
which Dr. White was concerned, yet
each change found him in the vanguard as
a trusted counselor and leader. His life
is witness of the contributions made by a
physician in the public service to medical
science, to his profession, to the sick,
and to the wise and tolerant under-
standing of his times — MARY Ross
MARGARET C. HOLLY, executive of the
Plainfield, N. J. Charity Organization
Society, for thirty years active in civic
and social work.
HELEN M. POLLOCK, of the Children's
Bureau of Philadelphia; for many years
the "right hand" of the late Prentice
Murphy.
120
THE SURVEY
Book Reviews
History With a Future
AMERICAN PRISONS: A STUDY IN AMERI-
CAN SOCIAL HISTORY PRIOR TO 1915, by Blake
McKelyey. University of Chicago Press. 212
pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
'TPHE long-needed history of Ameri-
can prisons and reformatories and
of the reform movements which have
produced them is here achieved. It is
a contribution of real significance to
American social history. The author
shows a good command of his subject.
He has acquainted himself with the ma-
jor histories of individual state penal
systems, with the monographs that have
told in part the story of our penal de-
velopment, and with the fugitive reports
and memoranda out of which the authen-
tic account of the growth of the Ameri-
can prison system must be constructed.
Beginning with the origins of Ameri-
can prisons in the last half of the eigh-
teenth century, the author traces their
antecedents back to the monastic prisons
of the Middle Ages and the workhouses
and jails of the Netherlands. He tells
of the establishment of the American
prison system, by 1835, and estimates
critically the theories and practices ac-
companying it. He follows with an ad-
mirable treatment of the revolutionary
program which produced the Elmira
Reformatory and the triumph of the
Elmira idea in American penology, in
which the leaders in this historic move-
ment for prison betterment are charac-
terized and their labors properly ap-
praised. There is an excellent chapter on
the problem of prison labor, stressing
the possible pedagogical aspects of work
in prisons. Separate chapters recount the
prison development in special sections of
the country, rightly emphasizing the
backward and brutal character of south-
ern prisons.
Since the work stops with 1915, it
ends when the momentum of the Elmira
movement was being spent and the re-
formatory conception had receded from
its dominant position in American penal
reform. The era since has been domi-
nated by the ideas of Thomas Mott Os-
borne and by the rise of psychiatry as a
technique for dealing with delinquents.
The book is so good that most readers
will regret that it does not cover the very
interesting period of the last twenty
years, in many ways as revolutionary as
that from 1860 to 1890.
The major conclusion which will be
drawn from the book is that scientists
and reformers have created a reliable
and effective technique for dealing with
delinquents, but that the task of
applying it in well-integrated fashion
within our institutions is a challenge to
the future rather than an achievement
to which we can already point. Many
prisons of 1935 had improved only in
architecture over the best of 1835.
Auburn, N. Y. HARRY ELMER BARNES
A Different Sociology
PRINCIPLES AND LAWS OF SOCIOLOGY,
by Harold A. Phelps. Wiley. 544 pp. Price $4
postpaid of The Survey.
/"\NCE in a while a point of view which
^"^ is different appears in print. Here is
a book for the student, the caseworker,
the teacher of social science. In a few
hundred pages, it summarizes the field,
logic and generalizations of sociology
without long debates as to the validity of
the generalizations or lengthy references
to the persons who discovered and formu-
lated them. The reader is led quickly and
logically to the "meat" of the matter.
One might suspect that such a book is
without critical analysis of the formula-
tions stated — but not so. Scrutiny has
been exercised, not only in the presenta-
tion of the correlations and their explana-
tions, but also in the elimination or omis-
sion of materials from the text. Only
those statements of uniformities have been
included upon which there is some degree
of unanimity.
Even these, the author indicates, are
valid and applicable only within limits,
and any statement of social laws must
define these limits. The author defines
them as fixed sociological patterns or con-
figurations within which repetitive phe-
nomena are discernible, and within which
uniformities can be established with reas-
onable certainty. The societal patterns
are: Population, Ruralization, Urbaniza-
tion, Industrialism, Mobility, Social Or-
ganization, Social Class and Status, So-
cial Disorganization and Cyclical Fluc-
tuations. The book departs from accepted
sociological outlines and classifies its ma-
terial in terms of the content of the laws
and principles discussed. The volume
needs to be read and studied to be appre-
ciated. No review can do justice to a book
which in itself reviews and surveys state-
ments of social laws and principles.
The author presents sociology as a
natural science. Society is a phenomenon
of nature, and as such is subject to scien-
tific investigation. However, the term
"natural study" of sociology is repeated
with such monotonous emphasis that one
questions the choice of the term. It ap-
pears that the use of the adjectives weak-
ens the simple verity that sociology is a
science.
Then too, from the point of view of
social service which cannot be divorced
entirely from sociology, • it is regrettable
that the author made practically no men-
tion of the concept of personality, the
creation and product, to a large extent, of
social patterns. Why all this study of so-
cial configurations when the individual
counterparts and carriers of these pat-
terns are ignored? Recent texts on so-
ciology include this point.
The two objections, however, are of
minor importance in view of the book's
clarity and adaptability and its new ar-
rangement and classification of sociologi-
cal material.
CHARLES H. Z. MEYER
Department of Sociology and Anthro-
pology, Central Y 'MCA College, Chicago
Making for Tolerance
MIND, MEDICINE, AND METAPHYSICS,
by William Brown, M.D. Oxford University
Press. 294 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Sur-
vey.
' I VHIS series of popular lectures and
essays "composed during the last two
or three years in divers circumstances" is
designed to achieve "a philosophical syn-
thesis of psychology, medicine, and meta-
physics." That is a synthesis devoutly to
be desired, and so far as I know not yet
achieved, even in this book.
Dr. Brown shows competence in the
fields of psychology and metaphysics, and
that in itself is a very rare achievement,
but his references to general medicine do
not give grounds for believing that he
understands it. He is a large-hearted
tolerant eclectic endeavoring to choose
the best from the three great fields men-
tioned in his title. Now I take it that we
are all trying to be eclectics in this sense.
We are all trying to prove all things and
hold fast that which is good. The only
possible reproach against eclecticism as
such is that the bits of wisdom chosen
from many fields may not be integrated
into a single system. That is my chief
criticism of Dr. Brown's book. He has a
little bit of Annie Payson Call and her
Power Through Repose (the gospel of
relaxation), a good deal more of Dr.
Coue and his methods of self-suggestion,
quite a bit of hypnotism, a great deal of
Freud and psychoanalysis, and a large
slice of Christianity, including a forth-
right defense of free will and of the ethi-
cal concepts so generally disregarded by
psychiatrists and especially by psycho-
analysts. One can only admire the aim of
combining all of these fragments into a
reasonable and consistent whole, but it
must be confessed that Dr. Brown does
not achieve that aim. Perhaps if he wrote
a single, systematic work, instead of
printing this series of disconnected talks
and papers, he might weld together his
philosophy, his psychology, and his medi-
cine, but he has not yet accomplished it.
Nevertheless I think the book will do
good because it will at any rate suggest
that some responsible and experienced
physician thinks that psychology, medicine
APRIL 1937
121
and metaphysics can be united into a
single creed. A book making for toler-
ance, it is of value in the conquest of
fanaticism, whether it be the fanaticism
of psychoanalysts or of their opponents.
Unlike most Englishmen, and especially
unlike most Oxford men, Dr. Brown
shows the bane of our American habit of
hurry. He has also some American opti-
mism and good nature.
RICHARD C. CABOT, M.D.
Cambridge, Mass.
Restating Religion
CHRISTIANITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL,
by Halford E. Luccock. Cokesbury Press. 165
pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
CHARACTER AND CHRISTIAN EDUCA-
TION, by Stewart G. Cole. Cokesbury Press.
249 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
«{""\UR shared doubts have been the
^~^ only thing we had in common.
They were not enough." Professor Luc-
cock does not lack texts from contempo-
rary literature for his rescue of the in-
dividual who lives and moves and has
such being as he can manage in crowds.
The candid camera nuisance that he does
not scorn to employ catches today's mind
in its gestures of unembarrassed bewil-
derment, and pictures in a phrase, a line
of verse, a penetrating illustration, the
tensions of living as private persons.
These Jarrell Lectures, delivered at Em-
ory University, start no stampede back
to the simple gospel, ignoring social
needs. They restate, in terms of modern
urgencies, the resources of religion for
collapsed souls who, like Alice, forced to
feed on the wrong side of the mushroom,
have been getting smaller and smaller.
President Cole, in an annotated text,
after a careful review of the process of
character education that would find favor
with progressive education, finally speaks
his mind to educators, religious and
otherwise, who look on the church as
another social agency for character train-
ing, to the neglect of its religious func-
tion. Making much of the inarticulate re-
ligion of character education, and its im-
plicit religious assumptions, he calls upon
the church to lift these character values
into the range of explicit Christian allegi-
ance, vitalized through liturgy and wor-
ship. PHILIP GORDON SCOTT
New Haven, Conn.
Salmon Memorial Lectures
READING, WRITING AND SPEECH PROB-
LEMS IN CHILDREN. Thomas W. Salmon
Memorial Lectures, by Samuel Torrey Orton.
Norton. 215 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The
Survey.
' I *HIS 'book will be welcomed by a large
•*• group, for in recent years there has
been much interest in the problems of
children whose skill in language tech-
niques is inadequate, and a host of
theories and remedial procedures has
arisen.
To this discussion Dr. Orton brings his
years of experience as'a neurologist and
presents an original and challenging an-
swer. Its uniqueness lies largely in the
fact that he gives "an answer," not an-
swers; for, in contrast to many other
students, he relates the various language
difficulties of which he writes by saying
that all "may arise from a deviation in
the process of establishing unilateral
brain superiority in individual areas."
Two thirds of the book is devoted to a
discussion of this matter of cause, the re-
mainder to remedial treatment. But be-
cause Dr. Orton offers an answer, he by
no means suggests a panacea. On the con-
trary, he insists that diagnosis and treat-
ment of each case should be highly in-
dividual.
The usefulness of this book for the
non-medical reader is enhanced by the
fact that it presents a complicated sub-
ject concisely, includes a glossary of tech-
nical terms, and avoids footnotes — though
the scholar will find ample references to
authorities within the text. Nevertheless
the style, firm and logical, is not always
"popular," and the reader who is not
conversant with neurology may have to
keep a firm grip on himself through the
first section.
The method of presentation, the appeal
to varied groups, and the text of the book
suggest that here is a matter of wide-
spread social significance which can best
be solved by the cooperation of at least
two professions — the medical and the
educational. One could wish Dr. Orton
had discussed this.
New York CHARLOTTE C. PARDEE
"That Crucial Zone"
FEDERAL JUSTICE, by Homer Cummings and
Carl McFarland. Macmillan. 576 pp. Price $4
postpaid of The Surrey.
T^HIS is no story of the current
activities of the Department of Jus-
tice. J. Edgar Hoover and Sanford Bates,
end men of the recent minstrel show en-
titled "G-men on Parole," receive exact-
ly one footnote each. Neither will the
book throw much light on proposals to
renovate the Supreme Court. Its chapters
deal with the history of the position of
attorney general and the Department of
Justice.
No Department of Justice existed be-
fore 1870, though there had been an at-
torney generalship since 1789. Here you
will find how Edmund Randolph, Will-
iam Wirt, A. Mitchell Palmer and others
met situations and problems of their day.
The part played in the drama of our na-
tional life by the executive law officers
of the government — which is what attor-
neys general are — is not generally known,
and doubtless is worthy of a wider hear-
ing. Homer Cummings, the present attor-
ney general, gives us chapters on the
legal and administrative problems asso-
ciated with the birth of the nation, the
national bank fight, the crossing of the
continent by railroads, the emergence of
labor issues, enforcement of the draft
act, and such matters. He himself re-
gards the book as "the story of men, emo-
tions, methods and motives in that crucial
zone of law and government bordering
both upon the courts and the executive."
Mr. Cummings has been responsible
for gathering and classifying the volumi-
nous records of his predecessors. He has
not handled those predecessors with
gloves, but it seems likely that some day
a more interesting book will be written
from the same materials.
Trenton, N. J. WlNTHROP D. LANE
Id, Ego, Superego
SO YOU'RE GOING TO A PSYCHIATRIST,
by Elizabeth I. Adamson, M.D. Crowell. 263
pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
IFROM a long experience Dr. Adamson
reaches out towards human problems,
traversing the emotional ramp which
binds the general behaviors of the body
and mind. Recognizing a life of adjust-
ment and adjustability as evidence of emo-
tional maturity, in which creative and
constructive love play a part, she sets
forth in non-technical language the emo-
tional bases for success and failure in
human affairs.
The problems of childhood and matur-
ity alike are based upon conflicts of in-
stinct and conscience, which are eluci-
dated in terms of Freudian concepts of
the id, the ego and the superego, with all
the implications involved therein.
The author's viewpoint, in short, is that
a complete analysis is the most thorough
form of psychic reeducation. Neverthe-
less, there is an appreciation of other
means of psychotherapy, including the ac-
tive direction of a patient's life. In ele-
mentary terms, and with adequate illus-
tration, she presents people and problem?
together and separated, and with their
reorganization for more constructive, use-
ful living. This is not a volume for the
trained worker but rather a simple text to
elucidate the main elements in mod-
ern psychiatric thought.
New York IRA S. WILE, M.D.
Pro Humanist
THE AMERICAN STATE UNIVERSITY, by
Norman Foerster. University of North Carolina
Press. 287 pp. Price $'2.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
gMPHASIZING certain shortcomings
of our state universities, Mr. Foerster
proposes a revival and an elaboration of
the humanistic studies. The key to educa-
tional reform, he suggests, is discovered
in the liberal arts college — not with its
elective system of studies as we know it,
but devoting itself chiefly to mathematics
and natural science, history, literature,
philosophy and religion, along with inten-
sive training in foreign languages, ancient
or modern.
Contacts with the world's greatest in-
telligences "who rule us from their
122
tombs," youth flung headlong into the
endless mysteries of philosophic specula-
tion— such educational procedures may
raise a large-minded leadership capable of
saving democracy from the philosophies
of regimentation abroad in the world to-
day. Such, very briefly, are Mr. Foerster's
tenets.
A few who have worked in and with
higher education will applaud this book
and its conclusions. The majority, along
with the mass of our population, will dis-
agree, as the author realizes.
One is compelled to point out that Pro-
fessor Foerster, as director of the School
of Letters of the University of Iowa, is
arguing in behalf of his job. But, if no
good knight appears to defend the cause
of truth, then truth is compelled to use
the sword in its own behalf.
Whether or not we agree, we should
listen to the humanists, and especially to
Dr. Foerster, for in The American State
University he succeeds in relating human-
istic studies to the success of democracy.
DONALD HAYWORTH
University of Akron
Health by Education
HEALTHY GROWTH. A STUDY OF THE IN-
FLUENCE OF HEALTH EDUCATION ON GROWTH
AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL CHILDREN, by
Martha Crumpton Hardy and Carolyn H. Hoe-
fer. University of Chicago Press. 360 pp.
Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
"\\7"HAT are the results, if any?"
The field of health education will
find in this book a partial but illuminat-
ing and gratifying answer to this question
which haunts every educator in his medi-
tative moments.
Comparisons of suitably equalized
groups of children, in these studies,
showed that the experimental group,
which had received classroom health in-
struction, were healthier, had fewer de-
fects, excelled in muscular vigor, were
taller, broader of shoulder, weighed more
and showed greater improvement in cer-
tain dietary habits and in number of hours
of sleep than the uninstructed control
group. The health-instructed experiment-
al group also showed superiority in men-
tal growth and educational achievement,
which is interpreted in part as the effect
of an improved health regimen and better
physical condition.
Other things being equal, the vigor-
ously healthy children were better ad-
justed in school than were the less robust
children, and better able to meet their
day-by-day problems.
The authors of Healthy Growth state
their results cautiously and handle statis-
tics with the respect due them. Yearly
records which were kept from the third
grade to junior highschool, for more than
400 boys and girls in the Joliet schools,
give an unusual picture of the growth and
development of the 'same group of chil-
dren over a long period. The experiment-
al group was given intensive classroom
In answering
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
. BIBLIOGRAPHIES • OX • SOCIAL - SUBJECTS •
FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER who wishes to track down books, pamphlets, maga-
zine articles, reports, etc., on a special subject, first aid is available in a
series of bibliographic bulletins prepared by our Library staff. Issued bi-
monthly, these Bulletins can be obtained by annual subscription at fifty
cents a year, or by the individual title, priced usually at 10 cents.
Recent Subjects
Consumers' Cooperation
Credit for the Wage Earner
Crime, Its Cause and Prevention
Employment Practices in Social Work
Foster-Family Care
RUSSELL
130 East 22d Street
SAGE
Interviewing and Case Recording
New Leisure, The
Social Work Interpretation
Standards in Social Work Fields
Youth Movements (20 cents)
FOUNDATION
New York
TUBERCULOSIS EDUCATION
By ELMA ROOD
A brand new help opens new doors in this age-old fight.
PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE, Washington, D. C., says:
"Professional groups and lay organizations concerned with the education of the public on
the causes and prevention of tuberculosis will find the 125 page manual, "Tuberculosis
Education" by Elma R&od, recently published by Rural School Press, Madison College,
Tennessee, most useful. In the outlines for many activities to be attempted by a com-
munity launching a campaign for tuberculosis control, Miss Rood has done a thorough job.
Although applied specifically to tuberculosis, the manual might well serve as a model
for public relations techniques in other health education fields. R. R. Spencer,
Officer in Charge, Public Health Education."
125 pages, $1.25
RURAL SCHOOL PRESS
Madison College, Tenn.
HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL CASE RECORDING
By MARGARET COCHRAN BRISTOL
2nd printing now ready — cloth-bound, at same price
as former paper-bound edition
This practical guide to record-writing, general case-
work procedure and practice, is rapidly becoming indis-
pensable to social workers in all fields. It has received
prompt endorsement from administrators, case workers,
schools on both sides of the Atlantic.
A social work administrator says: "It is the best book I have read on the
subject. It has sensed the real problems of recording, is readable, right to the
point, and makes practical suggestions." — LEAH BRUNK, State Supervisor oj
Case Work, Iowa Emergency Relief Administration.
A teacher says: "The simplicity, directness and completeness of the book
commend it to the busy worker on the job. The comprehensiveness, clarity and
balance of the book are the qualities which make teachers recommend it to
students." — ELIZABETH G. GARDINER, Department oj Sociology and Course in
Social Work, University oj Minnesota.
The Charity Organization Quarterly (London) says: "Intended for the day-
to-day use of the case worker desirous of acquiring a mastery of the tools he
uses, a knowledge of what tools to use. The case histories included are full
and interesting, and the running commentary upon them helpful and stimulating."
220 pages, cloth, $1.50; postpaid, $1.60
The UNIVERSITY of CHICAGO PRESS
5750 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
123
health instruction and physical examina-
tions with follow-up by nurses and con-
ferences with child specialists. The con-
trol group received similar treatment ex-
cept that it took no part in any of the
classroom projects in health instruction.
The strength of the study lies in the fact
that many lines of evidence converge to
confirm, in the main, the important con-
clusions.
If a program of health education can
make a measurable improvement in
health and physical growth, mental
growth and educational efficiency, then
health education is definitely out of the
luxury class, and takes first rank among
educational necessities. Health education
specialists often have made such claims,
but they hav lacked the extensive sup-
porting data i.iade available through this
study.
MARION LERRIGO McWiLLiAMS
Larchmont, N. Y.
Sane and Critical
EUGENICAL STERILIZATION, by the Com-
mittee of the American Neurological Association
for the Investigation of Eugentcal Sterilization:
Abraham Myerson, M.D., et al. Macmillan. 211
pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
*~pHERE is at the present time an alarm-
ist attitude on the necessity of steril-
ization as an antidotal measure to save
the race from biological deterioration —
an attitude brought about presumably by
an increase in mental diseases and de-
fects. Feeling, the need for sane and
critical evaluation of the important facts,
a committee of the American Neuro-
logical Association prepared this re-
port.
The field of knowledge covered is ex-
tensive and includes such topics as the
history and laws of sterilization, the
arguments and points of view, and the
inheritance of mental disease. Through-
out the book, the committee is judiciously
cautious in the interpretation and anal-
ysis of facts and is, moreover, insistent
upon rigorous scientific proof before the
acceptance of conclusions. It is pointed
out repeatedly that the lack of experi-
mental controls and the meager treat-
ment of statistical data have nullified the
results of many investigations.
In many respects the book is a techni-
cal treatise which will prove readable
only to certain professional and medical
groups. However, the final chapter on
recommendations might be read with
profit by intelligently interested laymen.
In this chapter the committee recom-
mends, among other things, sterilization
in certain deficiencies and psychoses and
outlines the necessary cautions. It might
be quoted that "there need be no hesita-
tion in recommending sterilization in the
case of feeble-mindedness. . . ." As a
result of its studies, the committee be-
lieves that its most important recom-
mendation is for a coordinated research
project, to continue for at least ten years,
so that the "various problems relating
to inheritance of neurological and psy-
chiatric diseases might be clarified and
the resultant knowledge become the
basis of more appropriate action than
is possible at the present time."
ANTHONY J. MITRANO
The Training School
Vineland, N. J.
Job Holders and Losers
MEN. WOMEN, AND JOBS: A STUDY IN
HUMAN ENGINEERING, by Donald G. Paterson
and John G. Darley. University of Minnesota
Press. 145 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The
Survey.
\ N intelligent, thoughtful approach to
the study of human engineering, this
is one of the few books about the depres-
sion which has not been written around
a theory or a "plan." For a scientific view
of the results of the depression on individ-
uals, the layman seldom will find more
factual material and common sense in a
single volume.
The facts of the study were obtained,
over a period of three years, by approxi-
mately a hundred full time investigators,
who dealt with 8000 employed and un-
employed men and women of various age
levels and type of occupations. Data are
based on experience, controlled observa-
tion, careful analysis and painstaking re-
search.
The investigators first compared the
early-depression and late-depression un-
employed workers and found that, of the
two groups, the "late unemployed" make
the better showing on occupational test
scores. However, this does not tell the
entire story. "Survival of the fittest" oper-
ates only up to the point where the per-
sonal element enters the picture.
THE ILLEGIBLES (see page 109)
1. STANLEY M. ISAACS — president, United
Neighborhood Houses, New York.
2. GEORGE W. ALOER — counsellor at law,
New York.
3. BEARDSLEY RUML — treasurer, R. H.
Macy and Co., New York.
4-. ROBERT H. KOHN — official, New York
World's Fair of 1939, Inc.
5. EUGENIE SCHENCK — director, county
welfare department, San Francisco.
6. Louis TOWLEY — author of "Gov-
er'ment Cow," Survey Graphic, De-
cember 1936.
7. FELIX FRANKFURTER — Harvard Law
School.
8. FREDERICK M. THRASHER, New York
University.
9. LEONARD W. MAYO — assistant director,
Welfare Council of New York City.
10. MARION HATHWAY — secretary, Ameri-
can Association of Schools of Social
Work.
11. CHARLOTTE CARR — executive, Emer-
gency Relief Bureau, New York City.
12. HOWARD W. ODUM — University of
North Carolina.
13. FRANCES PERKINS — U. S. Secretary of
Labor.
The fact-finding spotlight is next turned
on special types of unemployed workers,
showing how the general unemployed
population differed in degree rather than
in kinds. "Young 'threshold' cases (8 per
cent men and 29 percent women) have
the same kind and amount of abilities,
but less experience than the general run
of unemployed. Unemployable workers (5
percent men) have much less ability, but
they are not lacking in ability altogether."
In short "unemployment is essentially a
problem of individual and group differ-
ences in the possession of all those traits
that go into job adjustment and success."
The spotlight subsequently focuses on a
group of employed men and women, and
throws some light on the problem of adult
education and reeducation. The investi-
gators then proceed to the front line of
attack — the employment office.
No treatise would be complete with-
out a discussion of the research implica-
tions. This the authors have covered
most competently.
This is a challenging volume to those
interested in personnel work and social
planning as it points the way to a more
scientific method of approach, in contrast
to the political approach in human engi-
neering. ROY N. ANDERSON
Teachers College
Columbia University
Housing Resume
CATCHING UP WITH HOUSING, by Carol
Aronovici and Elizabeth McCalmont. Beneficial
Management Corporation. 243 pp. Price $2
postpaid of The Survey.
tJERE is a real abridged dictionary
of housing in the U. S. A., 1936.
Small enough to put in one's pocket, this
handbook actually meets the challenge
of its title, bringing the reader up to
date with the country's low rent hous-
ing program. Student as well as layman
will welcome the clear and concise way
the material is presented. Together, the
ten chapters comprise an accurate re-
sume of important housing facts and fig-
ures, including a description of the ac-
tivities of the numerous federal agencies
dealing with housing; statistical and
other data on several important recent
housing surveys; information regarding
planning programs in relation to hous-
ing; and discussion of housing manage-
ment and of employment in relation to
housing.
The practical value of the volume is
enhanced by the material in the appen-
dix which contains a summary of fed-
eral housing projects up to June 24,
1936, and lists the states which have
passed enabling legislation in connection
with mortgage insurance under the Na-
tional Housing Act. A well selected bib-
liography of agencies and organizations
— public and private — throughout the
country which are concerned with hous-
ing is included. LOULA D. LASKER
124
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
Rates: Display: 21 cents a line, 14 agate lines to the inch. Want advertisements
five cents per word or initial, including address or box number. Minimum charge,
first insertion, $1.00. Cash with orders. Discounts: 5% on three insertions; 10% on
six insertions. Address Advertising Department.
ALGON™LIN 4-7490 SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
WORKER WANTED
Man with experience in Settlement work to be
in charge of the club activities. Jewish pre-
ferred. 7423 Survey.
SITUATIONS WANTED
American Negro Ph.D. (Jan., 1937) University
of Dijon, France ; college teaching experience ;
wants directorship of boys' work or princi-
palship of an agricultural school in the
Americas or Africa. 7408 Survey.
Experienced corrective speech teacher, trained
in psychiatric approach, also experienced in
tutoring, desires position June, July, August.
7404 Survey.
EXECUTIVE, thoroughly experienced in child-
care and recreational fields, desires connection
with progressive childrens' organization. De-
tailed information furnished on request.
Excellent references. 7426 Survey.
CASEWORKER AND EXECUTIVE. Man, de-
sires position in delinquency or protective
work. Nine years social work, including case-
work with men and boys in welfare and pro-
bation fields. Also experience in community
organization and as business executive. Gradu-
ate Columbia University and New York School
Social Work. Member A. A. S. W. 7418
Survey.
Worker with long successful experience in settle-
ment boys work available June or September.
Keen understanding of boys. Highest refer-
ences. 7414 Survey.
Woman, extensive experience various fields, work
with women and girls including organization
and leadership girls activities in Settlements
and directorship summer camp, desires change.
Interested supervisory position, recreational or
character building agency ; church or secular.
Member A. A. S. W. New York City or
^vicinity preferred. 7428 Survey.
Case-Worker, 12 years experience in childrens'
field, desires change of position. Interested in
foster-home placement of dependent children.
Member A. A. S. W. References. 7429 Survey.
DIRECTOR OF BOYS' INSTITUTION desires
change of position beginning September. Ex-
perience in group work, community centre
activities, camping and case work. College
graduate, social work training. Progressive
education viewpoint. 7422 Survey.
Man Worker, 20 years experience in Children's
Homes, Settlement House and Churches desires
permanent connection. Available May or June
first. 7430 Survey.
Drop a Line
to the
HELP WANTED COLUMNS
SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
when in need of workeri
Your Own Agency
This is the counseling and placement agency
sponsored jointly by the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers and the National
Organization for Public Health Nursing,
National, Non-Profit making.
~L y*<*s/9noJ' C4*4r
(Agency)
122 East 22nd Street, 7th floor, New York
GERTRUDE R. STEIN, INC.
Vocational Service Agency
11 East 44th Street NEW YORK
MUrray Hill 2-4784
A professional employment bureau specializing
in social service, institutional, dietetic, medical,
publicity, advertising and secretarial positions.
SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
SEEMAN BROS., INC.
Groceries
Hudson and North Moore Streeti
New York
REAL ESTATE
For Rent or For Sale
VINEYARD SHORE PROPERTY, West
Park, New York, 2 hours New York,
available nominal rental (might sell all
or part) , for social or educational pur-
poses. 36 Acres, Hudson river front,
2 large houses and stone cottage. All
improvements. Vineyard, woods, beaches.
Suitable for school, conferences, con-
valescents. Owner would also consider
proposal for transfer of property to some
permanent organization. 7421 Survey.
COTTAGE FOR SALE
Small secluded cottage, beautiful trees. Con-
veniences. Pine panelled living-room, great
fireplace. Insulated throughout. Sixty miles,
Long Island, North Shore. Delightful beaches
nearby. Rent or sell, reasonable. 7431 Survey.
FURNISHED APARTMENT
To Rent: June 1 — November 1. Furnished
four room apartment, Jackson Heights. Reason-
able rental. 7427 Survey.
to EMPLOYERS
Who Are Planning to Increase Their Staffs
We Supply:
Executivei Dietitian!
Grid. Nuriti
Case Workeri Housekeeper!
Sec'y-Stenogi.
Recreation Workeri Matron!
Stenographer!
Psychiatric Social Workers Housemother!
Bookkeeper!
Typists
Occupational Therapist! Teacher!
Telephone Operator!
HOLMES EXECUTIVE
PERSONNEL
One Bast 42nd Street
New York City
Ajency Tel.: MU 2-7575 Gertrude
D. Holmel, Director
THE BOOK SHELF
THE SOCIAL WORKERS' DICTIONARY
By Young, McClenahan and Young
Nearly 2,600 most frequently used terms briefly
but accurately defined. Covers many fields :
social work, law, medicine, psychiatry, the social
and biological sciences, also many slang and
culture-group terms.
Price: 75c postpaid
SOCIAL WORK TECHNIQUE
3474 University Ave. Los Angeles, Calif.
AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS
By Harold Coe Coffman
President, George Williams Collet*
"Invaluable," says the Red Cross Courier, "to
the organization executive interested in Founda-
tion assistance as well as to the social worker
concerned with child welfare projects." $3.08
ASSOCIATION PRESS
347 Madison Avenue New York, N. Y.
"Let the Nation Employ Itself"
Read
PROHIBITING POVERTY
By
Prestonia Mann Martin
$1.00 — Paper 50e
Farrar & Rinehart
Handbook of Trade Union Methods
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other printed work." — Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
ABC of Parliamentary Law
Manual for Trade Union Speakers
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Educational Department
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3 West 16 St., N. Y. C.
LOG OF THE TVA
By Arthur E. Morgan
Director of the TVA
An attractive paper-bound book, containing all
instalments of the story of the TVA, written
by its Director.
50c each postpaid
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
112 E. 19 St. N«w York, N. Y.
"THE NEXT GREAT PLAGUE TO GO"
By Thomas Parran
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able with charts which accompany the article.
lOc each
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Special articles, theses, speeches, papers. Re-
search, revision, bibliographies, etc. Over
twenty years' experience serving busy pro-
fessional persons. Prompt service extended.
AUTHORS RESEARCH BUREAU, 616
Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.
PAMPHLETS AND PERIODICALS
Th
e American Journal of Nursing shows the pert
which professional nurses take in the better-
ment of the world. Put it in your library. |8.00
a year. 60 West 60 Street, New York, N. Y.
MISCELLANEOUS
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
125
Believing some men and women are burdened,
anxious, needing help in meeting perplexing
personal problems, a retired physician offers
friendly counsel for those who desire it. No
fees. 7419 Survey.
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
Library Service
Health
Religious Organizations
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 520
North Michigan Ave., Chicago. To aid in
the extension and improvement of library
service.
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL
HYGIENE, INC.— Dr. Arthur H. Buggies,
president ; Dr. C. M. Hincks, general direc-
tor ; Clifford W. Beers, secretary ; 60 West
50th Street, New York City. Pamphlets on
mental hygiene, child guidance, mental
disease, mental defect, psychiatric social
work and other related topics. Catalogue of
publications sent on request. "Mental Hy-
giene," quarterly, $3.00 a year.
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS
—105 East 22nd Street, New York City.
The Inter-Denominational body of 23 wo-
men's home missions boards of the United
States and Canada uniting in program and
financial responsibility for enterprises which
they agree to carry cooperatively, such as
Christian social service in Migrant labor
camps, and Christian character building
programs in Indian American government
schools.
President. Mrs. Millard L. Robinson
Executive Secy., Edith E. Lowry
Associate Secy., Charlotte M. Burnham
Western Field Secy., Adela J. Ballard
Migrant Supervisor, Gulf to Great Lakes
Area, Mrs. Kenneth D. Miller
Child Welfare
BOYS' CLUBS OF AMERICA, INC., 381 Fourth
Avenue, N.Y.C. National service organization
of 291 Boys' Clubs located in 153 cities. Fur-
nishes program aids, literature, and educa-
tional publicity for promotion of Boys' Club
Movement ; field service to groups or individ-
uals interested in leisure-time leadership for
boys, specializing with the underprivileged.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR PUBLIC
HEALTH NURSING— 60 W. 50th St., New
York. Dorothy Deming, R. N., Gen. Dir.
Advisory service, statistics, monthly maga-
zine.
NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION—
50 West 60th Street, New York, Dr. Kendall
Emerson, managing director. Pamphlets of
methods and program for the prevention of
tuberculosis. Publications sold and distributed
through state associations in every state.
American Review of Tuberculosis, medical
journal, $8.00 a year ; and Monthly Bulletin,
house organ, free.
BERKSHIRE INDUSTRIAL FARM, Canaan,
New York. A national, non-sectarian farm
school for problem boys. Boys between 12
and 14 received through private surrender
or court commitment. Supported by agreed
payments from parents or other responsible
persons, in addition to voluntary contribu-
tions. For further information address Mr.
Harry H. Graham, Sup't., or the New York
Office at 101 Park Ave.. Tel: LEx. 2-3147.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN,
INC.— 221 West 67th Street, 9th floor, New
York City. Mrs. Arthur Brin, President;
Mrs. Maurice L. Goldman, Chairman Ex.
Com. ; Mrs. Marion M. Miller. Executive Di-
rector. Organization of Jewish women initi-
ating and developing programs and activities
in service for foreign born, peace, social
legislation, adult Jewish education, and so-
cial welfare. Conducts bureau of interna-
tional service. Serves as clearing bureau for
local affiliated groups throughout the coun-
try.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE A
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA—
C. C. Carstens, director, 130 E. 22nd Street,
New York City. A league of children's agen-
cies and institutions to secure improved
standards and methods in their various fields
of work. It also co-operates with other chil-
dren's agencies, cities, states, churches, fra-
ternal orders and other civic groups to work
out worth-while results in phase of child
welfare in which they are interested.
Clearing House, cooperating with social work-
ers in referring rhdigent mothers to medically
directed birth control clinics in 41 states, in-
cluding 17 centers in Greater New York. In
areas lacking centers, qualified physicians are
available. Phone or write: 515 Madison
Avenue, New York City. WIckersham 2-8600.
President: Clarence Cook Little. Medical
Director: Eric M. Matsner, M.D.
NATIONAL BOARD, YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATIONS, 600 Lexington Ave..
New York City. An international Christian
woman movement devoted to service for
women and girls and the attempt to help
build a society in which the abundant life
is possible for every individual.
New York City
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSER-
IES— 130 East 22nd Street, New York City.
To federate day nurseries in the U. S. and
assist them to establish and maintain ap-
proved standards of care.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTION ASSOCIATIONS— 347 Madison
Avenue, New York City. Eskil C. Carlson.
President ; John E. Manley. General Secre-
tary. A federation of 1123 local associations,
through state and area councils, for Chris-
tian character education among youth. Meets
annually to determine service projects and
budget for cooperation with local member
organizations in program emphasis and in-
terpretation, fiscal operations, etc. Empha-
sizes lay-professional cooperation, group and
club activity, and self-governing programs
of physical, social and religious education,
public affairs, international education and
special cooperative projects, citizenship, etc.
Specialized work among transportation, army
and navy, student, colored, rural, and certain
other groups.
THE BIRTH CONTROL CLINICAL RESEARCH
BUREAU, 17 West 16th Street: MARGARET
SANGER, Director; has added evening ses-
sions, Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
from 7 to 9 P.M., for the benefit of mothers
who work and cannot come to the Clinic
daily from 9 to 4.
Community Chests
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS. INC.
—155 East 44th Street, New York. Informa-
tion and consultation about cooperative plan-
ning and financing of social work through
chests and councils of social agencies.
National Conferences
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL
WORK— Edith Abbott, President, Chicago;
Howard R. Knight, Secretary, 82 N. High
St., Columbus, O. The Conference is an
organization to discuss the principles of
humanitarian effort and to increase the
efficiency of social service agencies. Each
year it holds an annual meeting, publishes
in permanent form the Proceedings of the
meeting, and issues a quarterly Bulletin.
The sixty-fourth annual convention of the
Conference will be held in Indianapolis, Ind.,
May 23-29, 1937. Proceedings are sent free
of charge to all members upon payment of
a membership fee of $5.
Foundations
AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND,
INC.— 15 West 16th Street, New York. A
national organization for research and field
service. Activities include : assistance to state
and local agencies in organizing activities
and promoting legislation ; research in legis-
lation, vocations, statistics, and mechanical
appliances for the blind ; maintenance of a
reference lending library. M. C. Migel, Presi-
dent ; Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director.
Penology
THE OSBORNE ASSOCIATION, INC., 114 East
30th Street, New York, N. Y. Telephone
CAledonia 5-9720-9721. Activities :— Collects
information about penal institutions and
works to improve standards of care in penal
institutions. Aids discharged prisoners in
their problems of readjustment by securing
employment and giving such other assistance
as they may require. Wm. B. Cox, Executive
Secretary.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION— For the Im-
provement of Living Conditions — Shelby M.
Harrison, Director; 130 E. 22nd St., New
York. Departments: Charity Organization,
Delinquency and Penology, Industrial Stu-
dies, Library, Recreation, Remedial Loans,
Social Work Interpretation, Social Work
Year Book, Statistics, Surveys. The publica-
tions of the Russell Sage Foundation offer
to the public in practical and inexpensive
form some of the most important results of
its work. Catalogue sent upon request.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH
SOCIAL WELFARE— Harry L. Glucksman,
President ; M. W. Beckelman, Secretary, 67
W. 47th St.. New York, N. Y. Organized
to discuss Jewish life and welfare, Jewish
social service programs and programs of
social and economic welfare. The 1937
Annual Meeting will be held in Indianapolis,
Ind., May 20-23. The Conference publishes
a magazine, Jewish Social Service Quarterly,
a news bulletin, Jewish Conference, and Pro-
ceedings of its Annual Conference. Minimum
Annual Membership Fee $2.
Recreation
NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION—
316 Fourth Ave., New York City. To bring
to every boy and girl and citizen of America
an adequate opportunity for wholesome,
happy play and recreation.
Industrial Democracy
Racial Adjustment
Vocational Counsel and Placement
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY—
Promotes a better understanding of problems
of democracy in industry through its
pamphlet, research and lecture services and
organization of college and city groups. Ex-
ecutive Directors, Harry W. Laidler and
Norman Thomas, 112 East 19th Street, New
York City.
In answeri
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., with its
44 branches improves social conditions of
Negroes seeking "not alms, but opportunity"
for them. Secures and trains social workers.
Investigates conditions of city life as bases
for practical work. Publishes OPPOR-
TUNITY, Journal of Negro Life. Solicits
gifts. 1133 Broadway, New York, N. Y.
iq advertisements please mention SURVEY Mn
126
JOINT VOCATIONAL SERVICE, INC.— Offers
vocational information, counsel, and place-
ment in social work and public health nurs-
ing. Non-profit making. Sponsored as na-
tional, authorized agency for these fields by
American Association of Social Workers and
National Organization for Public Health
Nursing, 122 E. 22nd St.. New York City.
1MONTHLY
THE NEW FEDERAL AND STATE
PROGRAMS FOR SOCIAL SECURITY
will necessitate special knowledge on tin-
part of social workers for integrating
public and private social work.
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
FOR JEWISH SOCIAL WORK
offers graduate professional curricula for
the acquisition of the necessary knowl-
edge and skills, leading to the Master's
and Doctor's degrees.
April 30th is the last day for filing appli-
cations for fellowships. For full
information write to
DR. M. J. KARPF, Director
The
Graduate
School
For
Jewish
Social Work
71 West 47th Street, New York City
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
DIVISION OF SOCIAL WORK
Professional Training and Senior College Pre-
Durses in preparation for Social Work in Public
Graduate *
Vocational Courses in preparatu
Service and in Private Agencies.
Particular emphasis on the Training of Men for Work among
Delinquents and other types of Public Service.
Courses leading to the degrees of Bachelor and Master of
Science in Social Service and Doctor of Social Science.
Electives available in the University include over a hundred
and fifty credit hours on a graduate level which have vocational
value.
Address
84 Exeter Street
DIVISION OF SOCIAL WORK
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Boston
SCHOOL OF NURSING
OF YALE UNIVERSITY
A Profession for the College Woman
The thirty-two months' course, providing an intensive and
varied experience through the case study method, leads to th«
degree of
MASTER OF NURSING
A Bachelor's degree in arts, science or philosophy from a
college of approved standing is required for admission.
For catalogue and information address:
The Dean, YALE SCHOOL OF NURSING
New Haven, Connecticut
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL
OF SOCIAL SERVICE
A Catholic Graduate School
of Social Work
Located in New York City
With Its Unique Resources
For Professional Training
Two Year Course, Leading to
a Diploma and M.A. Degree
Open to Men and Women
Fall Term Begins Sept. 28, 1937
Applications Due by May 30, 193"/
Bulletin Sent on Request
Room 805, Woolworth Building
New York City
Membership invited
in the
J\ 47-day travel
study project,
directed by
WALTER WEST,
Executive Secre-
tary of the Amer-
ican Association
of Social Workers.
Members will par-
ticipate in a well-
rounded program
of observation
and discussion,
and will be
assisted in special-
ized investigations
in their own fields.
Edutravel also offers
complete service for
individual travel and
short cruises. Call,
write or phone for
full information —
and mention Survey
Midmonthly.
Sail July 3rd - Return Aug. 18th
A pamphlet giving lull details of itinerary,
costs, is just off the press. Ask for it.
OTHER INTERESTING EDUTRAVELOGS
for this Summer include : a 57-day trip with
the well-known reporter, John L. Spivak, visit-
ing places and people that figure in the news
of the day ... a 60-day study trip of the arts
of national minorities in the U.S.S.R., led by
Langston Hughes, Negro poet and playwright
... A 49-day tour with Dr. Broadus Mitchell,
outstanding political economist.
GDUTRAVGL, Inc.
An Institute for Educational Travel
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. N. Y.
Telephones: GRamercy 7-3284-3285
In annverinq advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
127
1896
Associate and Special Group Meetings
Consultations — Exhibits
1937
FORTY-ONE years ago, the eighteenth annual meeting of the NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF
SOCIAL WORK first met in Indianapolis.
1937 finds that city again preparing for the Conference — the sixty-fourth annual meeting — the
largest in its history.
The following organizations, meeting with the National Conference, invite delegates to attend their
special meetings, to confer about specific professional problems or to view their exhibits and displays
and examine the most recent literature pertaining to social work.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE, INC.
Meetings: Claypool, May 24 and 27. 4 to 5:30 P.M.
Athenaeum Ballroom, May 25, 2 to 2:30 P.M.
AMERICAN HOME ECONOMICS ASSOCIATION
Dept. of Home Economics in Social Work
AMERICAN LEGION
National Child Welfare Division
AMERICAN PUBLIC WELFARE ASSOCIATION
AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, INC.
Consultation & Exhibit, Murat Temple
CHURCH CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK
Federal Council of Churches
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS, INC.
Consultation Service, Hotel Lincoln
EPISCOPAL SOCIAL WORK CONFERENCE
Afternoon sessions; Wednesday and Friday Luncheons;
Thursday dinner meeting. Programs available at 281
Fourth Avenue, New York City
FAMILY WELFARE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
and THE FAMILY
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN
LIFE INSURANCE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU
Antlers Hotel. May 26, Luncheon; May 27 meeting at
2 P.M.
MOTHERS' AID ASSOCIATION
Consultation Service
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GOODWILL INDUSTRIES
NATIONAL BOARD OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTES
May 24 — 4 P.M. — "Giving the Future a Past."
May 25 — 4 P.M. — Joint session with other agencies in the
immigration and naturalization field.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH SOCIAL WELFARE
Hotel Severin, May 19-23
NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR THE PHYSICALLY
HANDICAPPED
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSERIES
Hq. Claypool, May 27, 2 to 2:30, "Constructive Services
of Day Nursery for Parents and Children."
May 28, 3:30 to 5, Round Table Discussion, "Place of Day
Nursery in Child Welfare."
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENTS
NATIONAL PROBATION ASSOCIATION
May 21-25, Claypool Hotel
Subjects: probation, parole, juvenile courts, community
preventive movements
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
Consultations by arrangement at the Foundation booth
SOCIAL WORK PUBLICITY COUNCIL
Consultations and Exhibits, Murat Temple
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Survey Graphic and The Survey Midmonthly
Book Exhibits
1916
SIXTY-FOURTH MEETING
National Conference of Social Work
INDIANAPOLIS
128
GROUP WORK INSTITUTE
May 31 — June 19, 1937
Western Reserve University
A three weeks institute for experienced group
workers including credit courses in Principles of
Group Work, Supervision of Group Work, Work
with Individuals in Groups, The Use of the Skills
(dramatics, crafts, music).
A bachelor's degree from a college of approved
standing is required for admission.
For information address
School of Applied Social Sciences, Western
Reserve University
Cleveland Ohio
SIMMONS COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
Professional Education in
Medical Social Work
Psychiatric Social Work
Family Welfare
Child Welfare
Community Work
Social Research
Leading to the degrees of B.S. and M.S.
A catalog will be sent on request
18 Somerset Street Boston, Massachusetts
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
DIVISION OF SOCIAL WORK
Graduate Professional Training and Senior College Pre-
Vocational Courses in preparation for Social Work in Public
Service and in Private Agencies.
Particular emphasis on the Training of Men for Work among
Delinquents and other types of Public Service.
Courses leading to the degrees of Bachelor and Master of
Science in Social Service and Doctor of Social Science.
Electives available in the University include over a hundred
and fifty credit hours on a graduate level which have vocational
value.
Address
84 Exeter Street
DIVISION OF SOCIAL WORK
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Boston
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
FOR JEWISH SOCIAL WORK
offers graduate professional curricula for
the acquisition of the necessary knowledge
and skills for social work, leading to the
Master's and Doctor's degrees.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SOCIAL
WORK AGENCIES
increasingly require such knowledge and
skill from candidates for positions.
For information about require-
ments for admission, scholar-
ships and fellowships, write to
DR. M. J. KARPF, Director
The
Graduate
School
For
Jewish
Social Work
71 West 47 Street, New York City
THE NEW YORK SCHOOL
OF SOCIAL WORK
CURRICULUM FOR 1937-38
Professional training combining courses and field
work, in both public and private agencies, is
offered in the following fields:
Public Welfare
Group Work
Administration
Social Research
Community Organization
Psychiatric Social Work
Medical Social Work
Family Case Work
Probation and Parole
Child Welfare
The School year is divided into four quarters and
application may be made for any quarter. The
summer curriculum is planned especially for pro-
fessional social workers.
A catalogue will be sent upon request.
122 EAST 22ND STREET
New York N. Y.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
129
PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
AFFILIATED WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
The Regular School offers two years of graduate professional training upon the completion of which
the degree, Master of Social Work, is conferred by the University of Pennsylvania. The curriculum
includes courses in
Social Case Work
Social Research
Social Work Administration
The Advanced Curriculum offers training beyond the two year course to graduates of accredited
schools of social work who have had successful professional experience. This curriculum includes
advanced technical courses in
Supervision and teaching of social case work
Psychological treatment of children
Social work administration
Applications for the 1937-1938 session should be filed by May 15. A bulletin will be sent upon request.
311 SOUTH JUNIPER STREET, PHILADELPHIA
SMITH COLLEGE SCHOOL
FOR SOCIAL WORK
The School offers courses of instruction leading to the de-
gree of Master of Social Science, a post-graduate course of
training in the supervision and teaching of case work, a
summer session of instruction for those already engaged in
case work, and three two-week seminars on selected topics.
Registration for the first two types of courses for the 1937
session is now closed but a few places may still be open in
the seminars and in the summer session. During July and
August, 1937, the following seminars are being offered :
1. Application of Mental Hygiene to Present-day Problems
in Case Work with Families. Miss Grace Marcus and Dr.
Evelyn Alpern. July 12-24.
2. Application of Depth Psychology to Social Case Work.
Dr. LeRoy M. A. Maeder and Miss Beatrice H. Wajdyk.
July 26-August 7.
3. The Supervisor in Public Welfare. Mr. Glenn Jackson
and Miss Mary Whitehead. August 9-21.
SMITH COLLEGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL WORK
Contents for June, 1937
The Home Situations of the Children in a Pre-primary
School : a Study for Visiting Teachers. . . Virginia Wallis
Bowers.
Factors Influencing the Amenability of Mothers and Chil-
dren to Treatment in a Child Guidance Clinic. . . Pearl
Kotzen Lodgen
The Work of a Family Agency with Clients Receiving Pub-
lic Relief. . . Lois Shattuck Parsons
Published Quarterly 75 cents a copy; $2.00 a year
For further information write to
THE DIRECTOR COLLEGE HALL 8
Northampton, Massachusetts
The
SCHOOL of SOCIAL WORK
of the
University of Buffalo
offers a
Two Year Post Graduate
Program
leading to the degree
MASTER OF SOCIAL SERVICE
Address the Dean, University Campus
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Division of Social Work
SUMMER SESSION
1937
JUNE 21 - AUGUST 14
The following are among the Courses offered:
Dramatics and Personality Development
Recreational Therapy
Family Case Work
Psychiatry for Social Workers
Publicity for Social Work
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Division of Social Work
Chicago Avenue Chicago, 111.
In ansiverinq advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
130
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office:
762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Editorial Office:
112 East 19 Street, New York
To which all communications should be sent
THE SURVEY— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMJDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIFFLE, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRICO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
MAY 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 5
Frontispiece 132
Patterns and Portents HARALD H. LUND 133
States Look at Public Welfare MARTHA A. CHICKERING 135
Case Work and Group Work — II
Social Workers and Social Action GRACE L. COYLE 138
Education for Social Practice WAYNE MCMILLEN 139
Nursing Is My Job NAN POTTER 142
Miss Bailey Says . . .
"Luck Isn't Enough" GERTRUDE SPRINGER 144
Behavior As It Is Behaved— VII
The Evolution of Carra Perna. ..ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 146
On Giving Away $1,000,000 WILLIAM H. MATTHEWS 147
Anniversary Project, The Midmonthly Survey 148
The Common Welfare 152
Back to Indianapolis RUSSELL H. KURTZ 154
The Social Front 155
The Insurances • Relief • Public Assistance • Youth and
Nurses and Nursing
The Public's Health •
Book Reviews . 164
Education
Professional • People and Things
Survey Associates, Inc.
• New York started to decline when it lost
the neighborhood spirit. — JAMES J. WALKER.
• We didn't win one thing we set out to
win in the last war. — SENATOR GERALD P.
NYE.
• Vindictiveness and denunciations are in-
dicative of a weakness in argument. — SENA-
TOR JOSEPH T. ROBINSON.
• A thoroughly good school is ipso facto
the best agency for crime prevention we have.
—AUSTIN H. MACCORMICK,, commissioner of
correction, New York City.
• The underlying cause of unrest is the
violation by a few great interests and not by
the majority of fair-minded employers or
workers, of fundamental industrial liberties —
SENATOR ROBERT F. WAGNER.
• To develop the technique of encouraging
the growth of good will and reasonableness,
while preventing its exploitation by those in-
sensitive to such motives, is one of the most
difficult problems society must face. — ARTHUR
E. MORGAN in Antioch Notes.
• We are suffering from a superiority com-
plex when we assume that all that is required
to protect those foolish souls who insist on
settling in areas subject to flood, is engineer-
ing skill and federal funds. — JAMES K. FINCH.
professor of civil engineering, Columbia Uni-
versity.
So They Say
• We're all workers together, the men and
I.— HENRY FORD.
• Mr. Ford . . . has but one automobile
company and a lot of quaint ideas. — JOHN L.
LEWIS, leader, the Committee for Industrial
Organization.
• Labor unions are backed by war-seeking
financiers and take away a man's indepen-
dence. They are the worst things that ever
struck the earth. — HENRY FORD.
• Chances are bright for taking a census of
the unemployed, according to Commerce De-
partment officials. In fact, it may be just
around the corner. — St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
editorially.
• The guiding of social change is a concept
that attracts. Most of us want to be in on
the guiding. — WAYNE McMiLLEN, University
of Chicago, to American Association of So-
cial Workers.
• Each of us as a human being feels himself
to be more or to possess more of a person-
ality or self than he ever expresses or can
express in appearance or action. — DR. WIL-
LIAM HEALY, director, Judge Baker Guidance
('.enter, Boston.
• The Constitution does not recognize an
absolute and uncontrollable liberty. — CHIEF
JUSTICE HUGHES.
• You stop thinking when you begin to
hunt for disciples. — H. G. WELLS, in the
Anatomy of Frustration.
• Hang the teacher if the pupil commits
murder. — Old Chinese proverb quoted in The
Educational Review, Madras, India.
• The time has passed, then, when we need
to fight for democracy. The time has come
when we need to think for democracy. —
EDWARD A. FILENE, Boston.
• Lying-in is neither a disease nor an acci-
dent, and any fatality attending it is not to be
counted as so much percent of inevitable
loss. — FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
• Where industries are chaotic and disor-
ganized— where the average life of a business
venture is less than four years — the wage
earners take up the shock of a brutal com-
petitive system. — JOHN C. WINANT, former
chairman, Social Security Board.
• A hundred times every day I remind my-
self that my inner and outer life depend on
the labors of other men, living and dead, and
that I must exert myself in order to give in
the same measure as I have received and am
receiving. — ALBERT EINSTEIN in The American
Traveler.
ftfe-R
Philadelphia North American
What Chance Has This Child? (1916)
New York Evening Post
Getting Tired ol It (1916)
Louisville Courier-Journal
Use It Wisely
United Features Syndi
The Great Enigma
After twenty-one years the National Conferenc
of Social Work meets again this year i
Indianapolis. Cartoons reproduced in Th
Survey in 1916 here balanced against cartoons <
1937 are clues to how far public social thinkin
has come. [See Russell Kurtz's article, page 154
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Helping Hand (1916)
Buffalo Evening
Testing the Keystone
THE SURVEY
MAY 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 5
Patterns and Portents
In the Field of the Private Agency
By HARALD H. LUND
Assistant Director, Family Welfare Association of America
PRIVATE social agencies are still in a state of uncer-
tainty as a result of the rude awakening which dis-
turbed so many placid dreams a few years ago. This
is as true as any generalization which could be made about
a field so ill-defined, containing so many different kinds of
organizations, and subject to no common standards of evalu-
ation. The opinion is subjective; it is based mostly on cir-
cumstantial evidence, derived from desultory reading of
speeches, reports, studies, mimeographed committee minutes
and carbon copies of letters, supported by a slight amount
of direct observation.
While lacking assurance as to their older functions and
activities, private agencies have not yet found themselves,
with respect to newer opportunities and obligations. They
have had to recognize that their resources and services
can reach only a small fraction of the persons who need
them. The necessity of a great expansion in public welfare
has therefore been undeniable, except by borderline insti-
tutions which have a doubtful right to be called social.
Yet, in the main, private agency programs have not been
greatly changed. They include orthodox recreational and
club work, protective and institutional care, health services
and the provision of basic economic needs, directed toward
persons on the lower economic levels. To this something
has been added under such headings as emotional adjust-
ment, family rehabilitation, character building and commu-
nity planning, but in spite of progress here and there I
do not think it can be denied that these terms still represent
aspirations much more than they do specific theories and
techniques.
A variety of attitudes has been exhibited in this transi-
tional period. Some agencies have hardly noticed that the
world is moving and are consequently bewildered by the
lack of interest in their work. Others, better entrenched,
defend the merits of their activities against all questions,
making large demands upon loyalty, faith and the wisdom of
the founding fathers. A number have become extremely
active and inventive in devising new services or new names
for old services. Manv have admitted their doubts and are
trying honestly to get a perspective in relation to the larger
social developments.
After a number of sleepless nights, I have decided that
the latter is the most strategic attitude. It relieves many
strains, including the necessity of thinking-through, a pro-
cedure of which as social workers we have become very
weary. Thinking-through is a heavy task, whereas looking-
outward is easy and relaxing. Seen in perspective, the fu-
ture of private social work does not seem to be as momen-
tous a question as it does when eyes are pinned on next
month's salary. It is important of course, as important as
the future of private education, private medicine and pri-
vate business, but the whole burden of the world's destiny
does not lie upon its shoulders. Perhaps a little more con-
cern with the outside world, a little more relation to it,
is what the field of social work particularly needs at the
moment. Considering that the possibility of carrying on any
kind of social work depends upon the outcome of the politi-
cal and economic upheaval through which the world is now
going, it seems that social workers in general have been
amazingly neutral and noncommittal.
Disavowing then any pretense of strict evaluation or of
pointing out the many contributions and values of the pri-
vate field today, I shall try rather to suggest the trend which
it might logically follow and some of the difficulties it will
have to surmount if it is to have a significant development.
TO remain useful, private agencies will have to undergo
marked change. The fundamental reason for believing
this is that they are parts of society, a growing organism,
now in a rapidly changing phase. Any social institution
which does not adapt itself to new conditions and new needs
will become a dead weight and ought to be eliminated.
There is a peculiar habit of accepting an institution as an
entity with an inherent right to exist. It must be apparent,
however, that a social agency, of all institutions, by its very
name, has a right to exist only as long as it grows and
serves society, from which it holds its charter.
The path which voluntary agencies are to follow ought
133
to be determined by the potentialities which distinguish them
from the public field. They have freedom to select what
they will do and how they will do it ; they are not immedi-
ately responsible to the whole community and can there-
fore shift their interests when new opportunities and needs
arise. Having these possibilities, their logical role seems to
be the activation of social progress. They should not con-
tinue to perform services which no one questions. It must
be their aim, when specific services are generally recognized
as essential for the welfare of the community, to make them
a community responsibility. They must always expect to
be in areas where there is limited understanding and ac-
ceptance, working intensively on a modest quantitative scale.
ONE test of a private agency might be lack of popularity.
It should have good will, of course, but if it has a
great following and a large body of clients it is probably
beginning to stagnate. If it has great size or wealth it prob-
ably lacks mobility. If it is steeped in tradition it is proba-
bly not flexible in its program. If it competes with public
agencies it is missing the whole value of private initiative
in social work.
The private agency has endless scope if its purpose is to
explore the processes of human growth, to reveal condi-
tions which interfere with individual freedom and social
progress, to demonstrate how specific problems of the in-
dividual and community can be met, and to pave the way
for the expansion of public services having to do with the
protection and promotion of human welfare. This is analo-
gous to clinical research in medicine and to the applica-
tion of scientific knowledge in industry. It does not require
the abandonment of simple and direct services to individuals.
The question here is one of the quantity of such work be-
yond the point where it is necessary as an approach to the
specific problems in which the agency is interested. These
services may be simple, for significance is not in direct
proportion to complexity or obscurity. The best work is
done with the least pretense. Continuity in program is also
desirable, for the greatest progress results from a slow and
systematic building up of knowledge and experience.
Many real difficulties stand in the way of maintaining
the freedom which private agencies ought to have. Institu-
tions tend to crystallize and to become devices for resisting
change. This is illustrated by many of the emotional appeals
in behalf of private charity to which we have been treated
in recent times. Characteristic are:
The American people may one day wake up to find . . . that
they must look to the halting, imperfect, and often incompetent
hand of government to undertake in wretched fashion the tasks
which were once being dealt with so well.
Only private charities can keep alive the personal and re-
ligious spirit. . . . No matter how much the federal, the state
and the city governments can do and give, one thing they can-
not give is the personal spirit, the personal attention, human
touch and above all the spirit of Christ, which is essential to
have charity as it should be.
To rob our communities of the element of voluntary giving
... is to destroy one of the most precious of human values
and to substitute cold mechanical procedures for the warm-
hearted outpouring of humane impulse. . . . One of the rarest
qualities in all human relationship is the personal touch which
the private agency can offer and which the government clerk
cannot and does not give.
These appeals do not come from workers or clients, the
groups most immediately concerned, but from eminent
men associated with powerful and wealthy institutions. The
arguments are of course untenable; it has long been obvi-
ous that private agencies at best can meet only a small part
of urgent community needs. The implied disparagement of
public welfare agencies is thus unfortunate, to put it mildly,
since the majority of the needy must depend on them. Pub-
lic agencies are certainly far from being what we want them
to be. Criticism is justifiable, but it ought to be directed
at strengthening and not destroying them. Useful private
agencies cannot be built on the dubious foundation of
moral and spiritual superiority. It is conceivable that a
government employe can be humane, if not Christ-like, and
it is possible for a citizen to express benevolence through
support of lawfully constituted governmental agencies. Pri-
vate agencies will have to guard against this kind of ex-
ploitation by groups opposed to social progress if they are
to grow.
Some dangers are also to be found in the joint financing
of private social work. Restrictions on function are likely
to occur under remote financial control. It is easier to carry
on a progressive program than to justify it to persons whose
primary concern is the cost. Joint financing also involves
promotion and publicity on a large scale, which usually
means reaching for the lowest common denominator of in-
terests and understanding. This might be more useful for
the public agency which needs to give an accounting to the
whole community. Breaking new frontiers of knowledge and
skill can be done better with a smaller audience. Men
who have made the greatest contributions to medicine have
not had to prove the immediate value of their work to the
whole population. The tendency of a powerful central
financing body, obligated to raise money, is to minimize
unspectacular work and to emphasize practical and quan-
titatively measurable activities in order to obtain the favor
essential for financial success. It is also prone to demand
immediate and concrete results in a field which does not
lend itself very well to this test.
Chests of course have served a purpose and still offer
certain advantages. They have cleared out some dead wood
among social agencies and have lifted charity at last to a
business level, in itself a great step forward. If the move-
ment to separate financing and social planning would leave
the latter in authority we might hope for further contribu-
tions. In the long run, however, the problem of the rela-
tionship between chests and agencies will be solved only by
a clearer understanding of and agreement on the function
of private social work.
THE private agency which serves its purpose as an acti-
vator of social progress will probably never have an easy
time of it financially. It will always be treading on people's
toes, it will be up against tradition and vested interest. It
will have difficulty in interpretation because it will be en-
gaged in work neither widely popular nor easily understood.
Support will have to be sought from imaginative persons of
all classes. These will be relatively few in number, drawn in
not by ulterior motives, but because of genuine interest in
helping to push the social frontier forward.
The strength of the future private agency will not be in
its size or in its wealth or in any claims to sole jurisdic-
tion geographically, functionally or spiritually. It will be
rather in the quality of mind and training of its profes-
sional staff and in the quality of purpose of its lay sup-
porters. The lines between the various fields of social work
will probably be less arbitrarily drawn than they now are
and there will be closer association with training centers
134
THE SURVEY
and with research groups in the related human sciences.
Charity conceived of as material or spiritual largess,
given by the superior to the inferior, will probably not
play much of a role in a desirable development of private
social work. It will take a greater part in retardation, for
social progress involves increasing recognition of opportuni-
ties for physical, intellectual and spiritual growth as the
right of human beings, not to be granted or withheld on a
voluntary basis.
The study and experimentation carried forward in some
private agencies in recent years, and the extent to which
these agencies have been able to break from rigid patterns,
warrant hope for the future. If the time comes when there
is no place for the kind of social work which can best be
done by private initiative, it will be because the world has
arrived at a stage of development which can never be
reached in a democracy — namely, a static condition of per-
fection. This stage apparently can be attained, however,
under some forms of government. I note in the morning
paper that pedagogy courses have been abolished in Ger-
many and the professors dismissed, since the ultimate in
educational practice has been established by decree.
States Look at Public Welfare
By MARTHA A. CHICKERING
Assistant professor of social economics, University of California
DURING the past two years reports of special com-
missions appointed to study the welfare services
of various states have been trickling into the offices
of governors. These commissions were the result of two
powerful factors: first, the liquidation of federal emergency
relief which left upon the doorstep of every state the costly
and perplexing legacy of so-called "unemployables" (to-
gether with no mean number of "employables" beyond the
employing capacity of the WPA appropriation) ; second,
the tempting bait of the grants-in-aid for special groups
held out by the federal Social Security Act.
Some governors, wise enough to foresee these problems
before they actually burst, appointed commissions to study-
meticulously the reorganization of welfare. This happened,
for example, in New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michi-
gan, Missouri, Connecticut and Minnesota. In certain
other states, as in Washington, where the depression ex-
periences made governor and administrators very sure what
they wanted to recommend, important legislation was in-
troduced without any published preliminary report. Some
others, like California, tried to work out, by compromise
action of interested groups, the best legislation feasible
under existing conditions.
The questions before these state commissions were very
similar. How should the emergency relief machinery be
assimilated into the regular governmental structure of the
state, if at all? If the state had no constituted department
capable of handling the increased responsibility of public
assistance, then what changes should be made and what sort
of department should be set up ? What should be the rela-
tion of this department to the categorical relief already
provided or to be provided under the requirements of the
Social Security Act? What should be the place of the
local unit of government in the reconstituted welfare pic-
ture? And, finally, who should pay the bill?
When one considers the wide variety of local conditions
— the differences in local government, in traditions, in
living standards, in relief conditions — it would be natural to
expect that, if ten reports were made in ten different states,
then most of these questions would be given ten different
answers. Such is not the case. In fact there is a surprising
agreement in principle and in general direction. It is obvi-
ous that, in spite of all the resentment which the various
emergency relief agencies may have stirred up by "dicta-
torial methods," nevertheless, the FERA changed decisively
MAY 1937
the American standard of relief practice. It is clear also
that the American Public Welfare Association has done a
remarkable job of convincing American statesmen, politi-
cians and public welfare officials of the soundness of the
principles embodied in its tentative draft for a public
welfare bill. Because, actually, the reports of the various
commissions are a chorus of practically unanimous opinion.
Does there seem to be a prospect of a continuing relief
problem which justifies reorganizing the state government,
or was Harry L. Hopkins just making a political pro-
nouncement when he said that "even at the return of 1929
prosperity heights, 6,500,000 to 7,500,000 will be out of
work?" The commissions' reports are restrained but firm
in their answers. "The burden of unemployment relief
will be with us for years to come," says the New York
report. "It can no longer be considered temporary, and
therefore, emergency methods should not be applied in
meeting the problem." Says the Missouri report, "We can
see no evidence for believing that the load will be greatly
lightened in the immediate future. After an economic dis-
location as severe as that through which we have been
passing, the number of those dependent upon public assis-
tance will be abnormally high for some years to come." Says
Pennsylvania, "It is the part of ordinary prudence for the
state, which clearly faces unemployment relief as a con-
tinuing problem within its own borders, to place its treat-
ment of that problem with a stable organization. . . ."
But what sort of a stable state organization? The an-
swers to this question indicate that the various commissions
concluded that anything other than what the state has
would be stable in the sense they seek — that is, would be
free from the shifts and uncertainties which come to a de-
partment subjected to partisan politics. In New York, where
the Department of Social Welfare has long had an admin-
istrator appointed by a board, the commission recommended
that the director should be appointed by the governor. In
Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, California, where the
director of welfare has for years been appointed by the
governor, it is now proposed that he be appointed by a
board, the members of which are in turn appointed by the
governor for overlapping terms. In Minnesota, where wel-
fare functions have been directed by a salaried board of
control, it is proposed to change to the system of a com-
missioner appointed by a board.
There seems to be something here of the charm of the
135
green grass in the distant pasture. Or is it that, practically
speaking, the appointing power becomes as important as the
form of organization ? It is quite possible that nothing will
assure sound public welfare administration short of the
election of a governor who knows good public welfare and
wants it for his state — let the political chips fall where
they may.
The disposal of, or relationship with existing depart-
ments of government offers the point at which there is
probably the widest variation in the reports. Many states
have had no permanent welfare authority for any purpose
other than supervision or management of state institutions.
Nearly all states, whatever their present set-up, find ad-
justment necessary. Pennsylvania proposes to establish an
entirely new department of public assistance, administered
by an executive officer appointed by the governor with the
consent of the senate, leaving the administration of institu-
tions to the existing Department of Welfare, but taking
over two of its present divisions, assistance and community
work. The tentative report of the Minnesota Commission,
on the other hand, recommends that a new state welfare
department simply incorporate the three members of the
existing Board of Control mto the membership of the
State Welfare Board as a salaried unit to go on, exactly
as at present, managing the state institutions, but under the
general supervision of the "new department.
Who, in the opinion of the commissions which have
been studying the welfare problem of the states, should pay
for relief, categorical and otherwise? That it no longer
can be paid by the counties alone is conceded in every
instance. But just where to divide the load is the sticker.
The Minnesota report recommends that the counties be
required to "participate financially in all welfare programs
at the rate of 16.66 percent of the total required needs of
each program," with provision for a state equalization fund
to help counties unable to meet this requirement. Michigan
recommends that the state finance wholly a portion of the
program (old age assistance, aid to dependent children and
the blind, hospitalization of afflicted children), while the
Legislative action establishing state departments of wel-
fare within the requirements of the Social Security Act has
gone forward rapidly in states mentioned by Miss Chicker-
ing and in others. Details of the plan adopted in Alabama,
Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland and Mis-
sissippi will be found in the publication of the American
Public Welfare Association, Some New or Reorganized
Departments of Public Welfare (10 cents from the APWA,
850 East 58 Street, Chicago). New York, by amending its
earlier law, has given its Department of Social Welfare
many new functions. During the past several months
twelve states have passed new laws establishing state de-
partments. They are: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho,
Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Tennessee,
Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Summaries of these laws
may be secured from the APWA as above. Legislation,
either for new departments or reorganizing old ones is
pending in various states including California, Iowa, Mich-
igan, Texas and Pennsylvania. In Florida the temporary
department established in 1935 will cease to exist on July
1 unless the legislature now in session takes action.
counties finance exclusively county infirmaries, hospitaliza-
tion of afflicted adults, miscellaneous relief charges, and
transportation of indigents. The state and county jointly
would finance non-categorical relief with state participation
in local relief costs provided "in accordance with the need
and financial standing of the respective communities as
determined by the state department of public welfare."
Pennsylvania's suggestion, the most radical of all, solves
this vexed question by recommending that the state carry
100 percent of public assistance costs. The report says:
Is the community's economic life chiefly dependent upon
one industry as in some of the coal counties, or upon many
industries as in some of the more industrial counties? Are
industrial wages high or low? The taxpaying ability of a
county depends also upon the type of property subject to
taxation. Is it chiefly farm land, industrial land or urban
property? Study reveals that the county with the highest per
capita assessed value of taxable property is one with com-
paratively sparse population but with many large resort ho-
tels. How should this fact be weighed in appraising that
county's potential resources? The attempt to answer such
questions as these in ways which will reconcile all factors
involved presents a problem of great difficulty. . . . The com-
mittee, therefore, has concluded that complete state assump-
tion of the financial burden is the wiser and simpler course.
Where money goes, there, it is said, goes control. The
question of the amount of state contribution to the local
community is inextricably interwoven with the hotly argued
question of standards. In fact, the right to set uniform
standards throughout the state is often one of the reasons
given for state sharing in costs, and standards almost in-
variably include standards of local personnel. "We record
our conviction that if even the minimum standards of re-
lief are to be established, the state must come to the aid
of the local unit of government," says the Missouri report.
The Wisconsin director of public welfare puts it thus:
A small share of each locality's relief and welfare costs
should be met by the state in order that the state may assure
to needy citizens in all parts of the state a reasonable uni-
formity of assistance; in order that there may be a place of
appeal for persons having complaints against their local offi-
cials; in order that reliable information on welfare expendi-
tures and the number of persons receiving public aid may be
collected by some central agency; and in order that needy
people who lack legal settlement in the place where they reside
may be assured adequate care.
The Connecticut committee recommends that: "Instead
of reimbursing for all costs of care given certain types of
relief cases, the state make grants to the town in the amount
of a fixed percentage of all allowable relief expenditures,
these grants to be contingent upon acceptance of certain
broad policies devised to insure reasonable standards of re-
lief and efficiency of administration with qualified per-
sonnel." The Michigan report says: "Partial state financ-
ing of local public welfare activities implies a minimum
of state supervision over the administration of those activi-
ties. That sound state-wide programs require state-wide
minimum standards and a blending of state leadership with
local autonomy and initiative is abundantly indicated by
experience in this and other states." Says the Georgia re-
port: "The necessity for such assistance by the state is
indicated by the wide difference in amounts expended by
Georgia counties and cities for relief. The amount Georgia
counties and cities paid for relief in 1935 varies from 2
cents per person in one county to $3.23 in another."
136
THE SURVEY
The New Jersey commission recommends that the law
dealing with aid to the aged "be strengthened to give the
State Division of Old Age Relief authority to require
adequate personnel standards for the county welfare boards,
with respect to both the number of employes and their
qualifications." Recommendation that state control over
standards of local personnel be provided for by a merit
system set up by the state welfare department, was made
by the commissions in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Minnesota, and in the proposals made in the State of
Washington.
The reports are also startlingly unanimous in their rec-
ommendations of provisions designed to retain local interest
and cooperation in welfare administration usually through
county boards of public welfare. "Responsible participa-
tion of local citizens in adapting state policies to local
needs, in the direct administration of public assistance in
local communities, is essential," says the Pennsylvania re-
port. "Local responsibility and local participation in mak-
ing use of community resources must be incorporated to
assure the effectiveness of such a program," says the Illinois
report. The Connecticut report, while recognizing the lim-
itations of local government, says that "intelligent public
opinion in local communities contributes greatly to the solu-
tion of the relief problem. The most hopeful approach is
in the individualization of each relief case, and a local
community, more readily than the state, can view its relief
roll as a group of individuals rather than as a class. . . ."
The transient or unsettled person comes in for surpris-
ingly little attention, although the New York commission
devotes an entire volume of its report to this one question.
Power given the state welfare department to make inter-
state agreements is recommended by the Minnesota com-
mission. The Wisconsin director of public welfare rec-
ognizes that the transient question "cuts completely across
local lines," and so is peculiarly a state problem. Some
states, like New York, undertake 100 percent of the cost
of relief to unsettled persons, but, says the New York
commission, "The state, through its official channels, should
strongly urge upon the federal government that the relief of
non-resident individuals and families is, in fact, an inter-
state problem and should be recognized as such by means
of substantial federal financial participation, together with
appropriate regulation."
THE impressive thing in all these reports is their depar-
ture from the deterrent spirit of the old poor laws.
"It is sound public policy," says Michigan, "to direct the
public welfare enterprise along the constructive paths of
prevention and rehabilitation," and goes on to urge that the
text of the law should emphasize "prevention of social dis-
abilities, the removal of the causes of such disabilities, and
the restoration of individuals to self-support and the nor-
mal conditions of life." Says Pennsylvania, "Public assis-
tance is now increasingly recognized as an act of enlightened
self-interest on the part of the community, directed to con-
serving the powers of all its members, so that they may
more fully discharge their proper responsibility to them-
selves, to their dependents, and to the community of which
they are a part." The Illinois report, in recommending
cash relief, admits that it is probably slightly more costly,
"However, the preservation of the self-respect and self-
reliance of our people is worth more than a relatively small
increase in relief costs."
A distinct effort is evident to get away from differing
standards of relief as between categories. The Washington
reorganization plan seeks to wipe out all distinction. 1 he
Pennsylvania report recommends that, "The basis of <
bility for all forms of assistance under the new county
boards of assistance shall be as nearly alike as possible for
all services, namely the actual need of assistance." New
York's report says, "Insofar as practicable, state aid for
home relief and the combined state and federal aid for
other types of public welfare services should be in the same
proportion, so that there shall be no tendency on the part
of local authorities to shift relief recipients from one
classification to another in order to secure state and fed-
eral moneys." Incidentally, it is interesting to note that in
the whole length and breadth of these reports the word
"client" appears, so far as this reader could see, only once.
WITH few exceptions all the reports, from whatever
part of the country, recognize that welfare services in
this day and age mean more than public action to keep
body and soul together. They indicate too that state par-
ticipation in welfare services is increasing and, with it, state
power to set standards making for uniformity and efficiency
in administration. However, there is a widespread feeling
that centralization of welfare administration can be over-
done, and that it is important to retain local participation.
There is still another point on which the commissions
agree. As the Ohio report puts it, "It is important to the
proper conduct of this great humanitarian and scientific
work that the administrative head of the department, as
well as the staff ... be not disturbed from time to time,
as at present, due to the biennial election of the governor."
There is not complete agreement as to how this end can be
reached, but the majority are inclined to take their chances
with the plan recommended by the American Public Wel-
fare Association — a lay board, appointed for staggered
terms by the governor, the board to appoint a director.
In this chorus of general agreement are one or two dis-
cordant notes. A Maryland commission recommended last
year that counties "be given complete autonomy for the
administration of relief," with the federal social security
grants paid to the State Department of Public Works,
which in turn shall disburse checks to the counties. The
present Board of State Aid and Charities would be left
only a few negative supervisory powers. The powers of
this board acting as the emergency relief authority, the
commission held, had adversely "affected the freedom of the
local authorities to interpret the form of relief in given
cases in harmony with the customs and economic condi-
tions of their sections." Public assistance should "be lim-
ited to supplying humanely the primary needs of the
people. . . . Beyond is a field of rehabilitation for the at-
tention of private and semi-private charities. . . . Society
has found no real escape from the discipline of labor. . . ."
But such voices as this are so completely in the minority
that they seem like fossilized remains in the midst of a
teeming and adventurous life. The recommendations of all
these commissions will not be adopted in their entirety.
Already, some states, after considering them, have made
certain changes. Nevertheless, in general, we seem to be
passing at last out of the Era of the Poor Law. Some of
the ancient poor law principles — local responsibility, local
financing, and the harshness designed to deter people from
seeking relief — have received some pretty hard blows. Per-
haps the new Era of Public Welfare really has dawned.
MAY 1937
137
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VJlXV^^l VV
11
Social Workers and Social Action
By GRACE L. COYLE
Associate professor, School of Applied Social Sciences, Western Reserve University
SOCIAL action as a part of social work is, I suppose,
the attempt to change the social environment in ways
which we believe will make life more satisfactory.
It aims to affect not individuals but social institutions, laws,
customs, communities. This effort began as an integral part
of undifferentiated social work in those early years when
social workers were also social reformers. Since that time
many social reform activities have become specialized in
separate organizations, such as the Consumers League or
the American Association for Labor Legislation, with the
rest of social work continuing its social action functions,
but generally in a limited range. It is true that some of us
have become a little ashamed of our idealistic youth. Social
reform has become a disparaging term. It is even implied in
some authoritative quarters that to engage in it is an evi-
dence of emotional maladjustment — the outward and visible
sign of an inward and unbalanced state. When I hear that
sort of thing tossed off glibly by some young worker I think
quickly of Florence Kelley, of Jane Addams, of Mary Mc-
Dowell and of certain others who fortunately manifested
that lack of balance.
I am one of those who believe that social workers should
have an active and effective part in social change. I do not
see how in a society such as ours it is the part either of in-
telligence or of courage to continue to pick up the pieces
without even attempting to stop the breakage.
What then is the relation of the social worker to efforts
at environmental change ? How do the basic concepts of
case work or of group work fit into the idea inherent in
social action that society can be improved by the efforts of
its members? Certainly it is not enough these days to retire
to an ivory tower and closet ourselves in deep therapy with
one client after another; or to shut our settlement doors
on the problems of the neighborhood while we perfect our
educational techniques with those inside.
The real situation which faces us as social workers in-
cludes a society, potentially rich but actually poor, wasteful
of its material and human resources, torn by class and racial
conflicts, its cultural life on the whole meager, vulgar and
disintegrated. Social workers cannot escape this reality by
absorbing themselves in individuals, groups or institutions,
or by drugging themselves with techniques.
Behind the techniques of both case work and group work
there needs to be, I believe, a philosophy that deals with
society as well as with the individual. Such a philosophy
must concern itself with the larger questions that confront
society today. The individual
and the group with which we
work are ultimately at the
mercy of the great social forces
of our times. What is the mat-
ter with our economic system
that we are poor in the midst
of plenty? In whose interest
shall our rich resources be ex-
ploited ? How can an adequate
standard of life be attained for
all? How can we preserve
How can the experience and practice in two major
areas of social work be joined for social action —
and why, asks Miss Coyle in the second of two articles
drawn from a paper presented before the Illinois
Conference on Social Welfare. In her first article,
published last month, she discussed the integration of
case work and group work and the contribution each
may make to the enrichment and strength of the other.
essential liberties and at the same time control our economic
life in the interests of the common wealth?
It is obvious that the experience of the case worker is a
rich mine of valuable information for those working for
definite social improvement. He sees in concrete form, mul-
tiplied before his eyes, the effects of low wages, or unem-
ployment, of bad housing, and he no longer regards them
largely as the consequences of laziness or rum, as his prede-
cessors did. Occasionally an over zealous practitioner may
consider them as suitable occasions for the development,
under his guidance, of proper adjustment to deprivation.
But on the whole we recognize them as evidences of social
maladjustment to be dealt with as such. Case workers who
realize the meaning in human life of the conditions of exist-
ence of their clients and who are able to portray those con-
ditions vividly can be a powerful weapon in combating
them, using their first hand information in legislative com-
mittees, city councils, or through the channels of organiza-
tions engaged to various programs of social action.
Whether the case worker can do more than that I do
not know. Certainly in his relation to his client, there need
be no domination in the interest of a social program how-
ever desirable. However I have observed lately a certain in-
consistency in this area. In cities it has been necessary re-
cently to raise relief money by an extra levy on real estate,
which had to be voted each fall. In the interests of that levy,
social workers, public and private, have campaigned in
their districts among their clients and at the polls. For
them to engage in similar activity in favor of a minimum
wage law or unemployment insurance would be unheard
of, at least in my community. The distinction is not quite
clear to me. I realize that the economic determinists would
easily agree on why social workers have backed the tax
referendum and have never worked for the other measures
among their clients. But I cannot accept theirs as the com-
plete answer. I believe that this inconsistency calls for can-
did examination by social workers.
For the group worker the situation is somewhat different.
It is quite possible for him to deal with social questions
with those most concerned. His problem lies chiefly in how
to arouse the socially inert to a concern in public questions
at the point nearest to their already developed interests,
and how to help those already aroused to intelligent and
effective action along lines that seem to be socially desirable.
The group worker cannot and should not determine those
lines for his clientele, but like any good educator he can
arouse interest and help peo-
ple to think intelligently for
themselves. In addition he, too,
like the case worker, can use
his own knowledge of the re-
sults of unemployment, low
standards of living, bad hous-
ing and so on, at many points
where action is possible.
For all of us as social work-
ers there are, I believe, basic
integrations to be made at this
138
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point. If we accept the underlying concept of social action
we begin to see society as a unit, the life of our country as
the object of our efforts. Such an acceptance has conse-
quences in our understanding of our clients. We see them
not only as individuals, but, as Dollard says, as links in the
cultural chain. We see them often as victims of great im-
personal social currents, unemployed because of technologi-
cal change, for example. We and they are the conscious liv-
ing edge of the stream of history. When we accept this
concept we grasp their situation with a new comprehension,
a new sympathy creed, a new conception of how our prob-
lems may be solved. And when we see them struggling with
their situations in movements for better wages, for higher
relief standards, for the right to organize, we understand
better the historical significance of their efforts. We come
to see that both they and we must find more adequate in-
struments for our purposes. At that point we shall stop
bailing out the ocean with a teacup and turn our attention
to harnessing the tides for the common good.
To do this will mean that each of us as individuals must
evolve a program and a philosophy which is social in its
scope. It seems to me to be unlikely and probably undesir-
able that social workers should agree in all their ultimate
social objectives. But they can agree, I believe, on many of
the immediate programs for better legislation, better hous-
ing, protection of the rights of free speech, the right to
organize and the right to social security on an adequate
level.
Vital social philosophies are not arrived at in secluded
contemplation or even by group decisions — valuable as they
are. They are evolved out of experience in the field of social
action. What is needed now is a greater awakening of social
workers to all active participation in the struggle for a bet-
ter society. In that struggle we shall use all our understand-
ing of individuals and all our knowledge of groups. Only
by such an integration can we use our technical skills and
our insights, partial as they are, in a coordinated effort for
the creation of a better community. If we can achieve this
we may make some contribution to the building of a civili-
zation rich in developed human beings, permeated with
mutually creative social relationship and culminating in
great cultural achievements worthy of the America we de-
sire. But both must be guided by an adequate knowledge
of society and a conception of what we desire for it.
Education for Social Practice
By WAYNE McMILLEN
School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago
THE impressive total enrollment of 10,174 students
was reached by the thirty-three recognized schools
of social work in this country during the academic
year 1936-37. This figure might suggest that the problem
of professional education for social work is at last well on
the road to solution. It might even seem that an actual
overproduction of professional workers is imminent. Hard
facts belie both conclusions.
In the first place the statistics themselves require an-
alysis. Of the 10,174 enrollees, 454 were taking only non-
credit courses. In most cases these are intensive institutes,
ranging from a couple of days to several weeks in duration
and do not represent a substantial block of educational
experience. Such courses are designed to help unqualified
people in improving their performance on the job, but they
do not confer status recognized by the American Asso-
ciation of Social Workers.
An additional 1779 students were taking courses in the
school of social work, but were known to be specializing
in some other school or department. It is not uncommon
to find among such enrollees a considerable contingent of
nurses, divinity students, and persons preparing to teach
sociology or to engage in home economics extension work.
In any case the primary interest of the student is in some
other field and he cannot be regarded as a potential recruit
for the field of social work.
Another 3989 students were attending school only on a
part time basis. It is very difficult to appraise the composi-
tion of this group. Some were undoubtedly professional
workers who returned to summer school "to brush up"
01 who arranged to take an evening course through the ex-
tension division. Many of these persons already enjoy full
professional status. Their desire to keep abreast of devel-
opments is an asset to the field but they must be disre-
garded in any analysis of the rate at which the supply of
new professionally trained workers is changing.
On the other hand some of the part time students are
definitely in process of acquiring a professional education.
In some localities the relief authorities wisely decided that
only applicants with an A.B. or B.S. degree would be em-
ployed when crisis conditions required that the professional
staff be augmented with large numbers of non-professional
assistants. Where such a policy was followed, case aides
and investigators without professional education are at least
eligible for admission to a school of social work. A consid-
erable number now wish to qualify for permanent service
in the field and are making heroic efforts to obtain a pro-
fessional education by carrying one or two courses in a
neighboring school of social work in conjunction with a
full time or part time job in an agency. Some of the lead-
ing agencies rearrange working hours to enable employes
to take advantage of the educational facilities.
A one day census taken as of November 1, 1936 showed
that 1032 of the 2659 employed workers enrolled in pro-
fessional courses on that date were under a definite program
designed to lead ultimately to full professional status. If
this same ratio is applied to the 3989 part time enrollees
reported for the entire academic year, presumably about
1550 are in process of pursuing a standard professional
education.
This number, added to the 3952 full time professional
students registered during the year, suggests that of the
total 10,174 students reported, only about 5500 are new
recruits who are quite clearly and definitely preparing for
a professional career in the field. This represents a marked
advance over the tiny trickle of qualified workers the
MAY 1937
139
schools were able to turn over to the field of practice a few
years ago. The question is whether this rate is adequate to
meet the demand.
The answer to this query depends upon developments
that lie largely beyond the control of the schools and of the
field of practice. We need to know first whether social
work functions are to be performed by social workers. It is
reported that social security provisions alone will ultimately
require a personnel as numerous as that of the post office
department. But we have .no assurance that the social work
functions in this far-flung program will be entrusted to
social workers. In fact Congress was at pains in certain
sections of the Social Security Act practically to invite
patronage appointments by specifying that standards of
state administration required by the federal authority
should not extend to "selection, tenure of office and com-
pensation of personnel." And at the state level we are con-
fronted by the fact that less than a dozen states have a
merit system of personnel administration.
IF the social services are to be a pawn of politics, no one
can guess whether the field of practice will be able to
absorb more than a fraction of the number now engaged
in preparing themselves for this work. But if, as the Pres-
ident's Committee on Administrative Management rec-
ommends, there occurs an extension of the merit system
"upward, outward and downward" and if this extension
is reenforced by an articulate public demand that the great
discretionary powers inherent in the administration of the
social services be entrusted only to persons disciplined to a
judicious exercise of those powers, then the capacity of the
schools will be taxed to the limit to meet the personnel
needs of the field.
In a single rural county of California, with a population
of 118,674, the paid staff administering the categorical aids
and the general county welfare program (exclusive of
WPA and of the state unemployment relief program) is
no less than fifty-three. Not one of these employes has had
the advantage of a professional education for social work.
Comparable situations exist in hundreds of counties
throughout the United States. There is a crying need for
well equipped people to man these positions. An overpro-
duction of qualified social workers is a very remote danger
indeed provided public opinion insists that social work be
done by those qualified to do it.
But the problem of professional education for social work
is not simply one of adjusting the output of the schools to
the effective demand of the field of practice. The more
fundamental problem is to adjust the performance of the
schools to the challenge of the times.
First and foremost this adjustment is a question of
money. The most devoted dedication to the task cannot
wholly compensate for a lack of adequate resources. Fig-
ures showing the current resources of the schools are not
available, but it can be definitely stated that these resources
are meager in comparison with the size of the job the
schools are expected to handle. It is not uncommon to find
that the only school of social work serving a region with
several millions of population has an annual budget of
about ten or twelve thousand dollars. In the past few years
$10 billion of federal money and $3 billion of state and
local money have been expended on social service programs.
The amount spent in the same period to provide competent
personnel for this task would scarcely pay for the postage
140
stamps in the multitudinous relief offices in the country.
This disparity would be less alarming if there were au-
thentic reason to expect a sharp shrinkage in the social
service program. But gradually the emergency psychology-
is evaporating. Informed observers now agree that hence-
forth a substantial number of employes will be retained on
a permanent basis to prevent and to alleviate the shocks of
economic insecurity. Unless there is some accompanying ex-
pansion in the resources of the professional schools, many
members of this permanent staff will be obliged to accept
responsibilities which their education has only partially
equipped them to assume.
The inactivity of the field of practice in relation to the
present inadequacy of educational facilities is one of the
most arresting aspects of the problem. Agencies have long
been vocal in deploring the dearth of trained workers.
They have been slower in sensing an obligation to assist
in obtaining the increased finances upon which expansion
of the educational program depends.
In other professions those in the field of practice have
often been successfully articulate in helping to recruit the
funds for an acceptable program of professional education.
Following some preliminary studies, the American Medical
Association established in 1904 a permanent Council on
Medical Education. The work of this council, backed by
the active support of the profession, is in no small measure
responsible for the phenomenal increase in the resources
available for medical education. In 1932, the seventy-six
medical schools in the United States and Canada, with a
combined enrollment of 22,135 students, enjoyed an in-
come of approximately $13 million. Fifty years earlier a
majority of them were struggling along on a shoestring,
as most of the schools of social work are today. For many
years the schools of social work have been striving almost
single-handed to raise the level of preparation for the field
of practice. It would seem that the field itself is under
some obligation to assist in this task.
THE slender resources of the schools are a menace pri-
marily because the expanding field of practice neces-
sitates an educational program of broader gauge than many
of the schools are now able to provide. When the older
schools were founded, it was almost impossible for young
graduates to obtain a job in a public relief office. These
positions were reserved for aging Civil War veterans, needy
widows and others who deserved well of the community.
Since available jobs were chiefly in private agencies, much
of the training inevitably stressed the methods and pro-
cedures appropriate to that field. Today the situation is
quite different. Now a majority of the graduates enter
social security or public welfare offices that function under
federal, state or local auspices. Case work, field work, com-
munity organization and all the older disciplines are no
less important than before. But added emphasis is now re-
quired in such fields as public welfare administration, pub-
lic assistance and social research and new courses have
become necessary in the more recently developed areas such
as social insurance, public finance and public housing.
These expansions are essential if higher education is really
to be articulated with the life of the time, but they imply
an enlargement of teaching staff and of library and re-
search facilities which only an increase in resources can
procure.
It is interesting to reflect that in several professions not
THE SURVEY
originally recognized as independent disciplines, vigorous
growth was long retarded by protracted vassalage. Roscoe
Pound once said that the great contribution of Grotius
was "to emancipate jurisprudence from theology." In the
early American colonies physicians were usually clergymen
for whom medicine was merely a companion profession
taught as a part of the preparation for service in the church.
SOCIAL work, in its educational aspect, is still in bond-
age, only partly emancipated from the control of
university departments of social science. This thraldom is
beneficial neither to social science nor to social work. De-
partments of social science tend to be dominated by an
urge to achieve a rational theory of economic, social and
political relationships. Schools of social work are concerned
with immediate problems of social treatment and with the
development of improved group provisions. These two ob-
jectives are by no means identical. The schools of social
work which, by wide agreement, give the most satisfactory
education for social work, are not fiefs of social science
departments. They are either independent institutions or
independent professional schools within a university, en-
joying an equal status with the schools of medicine and law.
It has been difficult for some university administrators
to recognize that social work needs to be developed as an
independent field of learning. They have looked upon
social work as merely an incidental application of the prin-
ciples of social science. Such a view overlooks the fact that
all professions are in some sense synthetic and that the syn-
thesis differs from and is more inclusive than its compo-
nents. Medicine derives from biology, chemistry and physics,
but is identical with none of them. Law draws heavily
upon history, logic and political science, but is clearly rec-
ognizable as a distinct realm of learning. Social work is
under obligation to an even larger number of disciplines,
but does not exist as such within any one of them.
The easy belief that a knowledge of the social sciences
alone equips a student to exercise wide powers of discre-
tion over the lives of inarticulate and destitute human
beings ignores the basic importance of attitude. Learning
in any field is the laborious process of mastering details
and of ordering them into some kind of relationship with
one another. But learning alone is not enough. Ideas that,
are not utilized are without meaning. Hence education — and
especially professional education — must develop the drives
and the habits of thought that cause knowledge to be re-
lated to the immediate problems of the environment.
SCHOOLS of medicine and law recognize the basic im-
portance of this union of learning and attitude and are
constantly seeking to achieve it. Usually they call this "the
development of a sense of professional responsibility." They
do not rely upon the underlying disciplines of biological,
physical or social science to effect this attunement. They
know that it is best cultivated in the atmosphere of the
professional school itself.
The apparent reluctance of some of the universities to
confer adequate funds and independent status upon the
school of social work reveals an unawareness of the funda-
mental change occurring in the intellectual outlook of hu-
man society. Laissez-faire and rugged individualism are on
the way out. Mutual aid and improved social provisions
are on the way in. Those who regard the current demand
for university leadership in the field of education for social
work as a transitory phenomenon induced by the extraordi-
nary relief problem of the depression are misreading the
signs of the time. And as a great English scholar recently
said, a "fundamental change in the intellectual outlook of
human society must necessarily be followed by an educa-
tional revolution." If the universities do not adapt to the
needs of the time, society will find other means to perform
the educational task that requires to be done.
Recent years have witnessed the development of schools
of public administration in a number of important universi-
ties. Harvard is the latest to undertake this type of train-
ing, thanks to Lucius N. Littauer's recent $2 million gift
for that purpose. It is apparent that these schools aspire
to develop a body of administrative officials comparable to
the upper register of the British civil service. But it is by
no means certain that this pattern will prove adaptable to
the American scene. The fundamental question involved is
this: "Is administration a body of knowledge that is readily
transferable from department to department or is it a tool
which can be applied constructively only by those who know
the function that is being discharged?"
THE answer to this question may not be clear with
respect to some governmental services. Social work
shares with certain other professional fields a conviction
that administrative training alone is not an adequate prep-
aration for the policy-making and policy-interpreting posts
in their areas. In a rapidly evolving field a basic purpose
of administration is to guide the development of the func-
tion. This requires a thorough-going knowledge of the field
itself. The mastery of a set of principles and procedures
that will keep the job going is an indispensable asset, but
in social work it is of no greater importance than profes-
sional attitude and an intrinsic grasp of the goals the field
is seeking to attain. Frank discussion and mutual respect
will be required on the part of those who are in charge of
these differing types of educational effort if confusion of
purposes is to be avoided. Social workers are in complete
sympathy with the effort to improve the quality of govern-
mental service, but they are -ersuaded that the public social
services will be more constructively administered by those
who have experienced a baptism of fire in the actual field
of social treatment than by those unacquainted with the
dynamics of social practice.
Thus, as these and similar issues show, growth in the
number of schools and increased enrollment do not mean
that in the field of professional education for social work
the road ahead is clear. Some of the urgently needed im-
provements are now widely recognized. In other areas there
is need for further clarification. Thirty years from now
those who look back will doubtless see that the present
stage of development was only a beginning. Let us hope
they may also be able to say that in the process of thinking
through the problems of professional growth and of clear-
ing obstacles from the path, the efforts of the field of prac-
tice and of the field of education were effectively articulated.
Sixty-fourth Annual Conference of Social Work, Indianapolis, Ind., May 23-29.
MAY 1937
141
Nursing Is My Job
By NAN POTTER
NURSING is my job. I knew it when I entered the
training school of a Pennsylvania hospital, and I
knew it during the years I worked on private duty.
For nine years now I have known that not just any nursing
but public health nursing is my special job.
That last bit of self-knowledge came to me one hot sum-
mer night in a two-room New York tenement which five
people called home. My patient had pneumonia and was
struggling for air. Across the court I saw fire escapes dotted
with bundles of small humanity — children asleep on the
hard iron slats. A network of clothes lines zigzagged across
the court, with a fine display of linen and clothing from
more prosperous districts.
Toward morning rain blew in the open window. Across
the court were signs of life. Frowzy heads appeared. "It's
about time those children were taken in," I thought. But I
was wrong. The children could survive the rain; the wash-
ing, source of income, came first. While I watched, the
lines moved to the complaining voice of the pulley, and the
bits of finery disappeared inside. It was only when the last
piece of laundry had been rescued, that the children, thor-
oughly wet by this time, were taken in.
I turned to my patient. She was sleeping and there was
nothing to do. The gray dawn communicated itself to my
spirit. Must I spend the rest of my life watching one pulse,
while all around me were crowded humanity" and neglected
children? The nurse's place was beside the sick bed. Was
that her only place?
That was my last private duty case. Since then I have
been a public health nurse.
I have been asked many times to explain just what public
health nursing is. It is rather hard to make people under-
stand its functions because it dovetails so closely with other
branches of service which are better known.
Public health work is wholly preventive. By that I mean
that the object of the public health worker is to prevent
the development and spread of disease. Any actual treating
is done with the object of rendering people non-infectious
or of immunizing them against infection. Curative medi-
cine takes care of the sick person. Public health medication
strives to prevent other members of the family from de-
veloping the condition that the curative physician treats.
My first public health experience was in southern Penn-
sylvania. There were practically no foreigners in this dis-
trict, but there were two classes of people that might be
termed indigenous to the soil. There were mountains in
most directions, and in these flourished the survivors of the
old moonshiners who still lived with their clannish loyalty
and secretiveness, their antipathy to the outsider. To the
south were the "Swampers," a queer mixture of white, In-
dian, and Negro blood.
And speaking of moonshiners, here -is one case in which
public health work led a whole clan to enlightenment.
Part of our work was with the county prisoners ; exam-
inations, treatments for the safety of others, and general
assistance to the sheriff and prison physician. One day I
was called to the jail by the big good-natured sheriff who
had as compulsory guests, three generations of the "King
David" clan, honorable moonshiners by tradition. Old King
David had taken his son and grandson to a church social
one night with the most friendly intentions but with a jug
of family moonshine stowed under the trees against contin-
gencies. As the evening wore on, frequent trips to the jug
beclouded the social issues, and the King David clan ended
by stoning the church. Hence their incarceration.
This left fourteen women and children to weather the
mountain storms and rustle food and fuel. After the first
few months the situation of the household had become acute.
When I answered the sheriff's call I found the wife and
two children of King David's grandson visiting the jail.
One of the children, I saw at a glance, was in a critical
condition. It looked like pneumonia. I took the child to the
doctor at once and then to a hospital. That done I drew
from the thin, sick-looking mother, the story of their life in
the mountains. Examinations showed that she had active tu-
berculosis and her husband incipient. A year in jail might
easily be fatal to him. The upshot was that the man was
paroled to return home to help his family, both parents were
instructed how to take care of themselves, and the children
were provided with extra food as a precautionary measure.
Old King David and his son had to serve out their terms,
but the health department had no further trouble.
There were thousands of children immunized against
diphtheria and smallpox during the years that I was in
that county, and in a great many cases we had to cope
with the superstition of the Swampers who thought that
incantations and mysterious ceremonies were more effica-
cious than immunization. There was the case of a child
who fell into a tub of scalding water. The Voodoo doctor
told the family that the first person who would come bring-
ing gifts would be the one who had bewitched the child,
and was to be treated accordingly. Unfortunately a charit-
able little Mennonite lady of the neighborhood chose that
moment for a mission of mercy. She and her basket of food
were thrown out bodily. When finally a private physician
was called in and the child recovered, the family was never
sure who should receive the credit — the Voodoo doctor or
the orthodox one. As they said, "It don't hurt to try both."
IT was in Pennsylvania that I first knew the satisfaction
that comes from feeling that you have helped hun-
dreds of persons instead of aiding just one. There were com-
munities where immunization against diphtheria, optional
under the law, was opposed as against God's decrees. It
took a vivid demonstration in one of the schools to bring
the other communities into line. This school had been com-
pletely immunized with the exception of one family. Diph-
theria went through that family and one of the children
died. After that we had no difficulty about immunization of
children in the rural districts of our county.
Then there was the work with babies. Poor mothers
could bring their little ones to our well baby clinic, for
examination and advice. The condition of some of these
"well babies" was unbelievable, the ignorance of their young
mothers abysmal. It was a slow hard job teaching them
how to care for their babies, but results were soul-satisfying.
142
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After six years of public health nursing in Pennsylvania
I came to Arizona. The work here is comparatively new
but has been attacked with all the enthusiasm of a young
state. My unit, under a progressive medical director, is one
to which any nurse would be proud to belong.
Conditions differ with localities, but there is always plenty
of color. Take the Mexicans for example. Their pleasant
smiles make one forget their weakness in the matter of
promises. They will promise anything you ask of them, but
you can't always be sure that anything will happen after-
ward. But at least social amenities are observed. You are
always invited in, no matter what your errand. A chair is
brought forward, and the woman of the house becomes
your hostess. However, if the object of your visit is known
to be distasteful she will usually retire into a complete lack
of knowledge of English.
A SCHOOL nurse reported one day that Amalia Gon-
zales had been sent home with mumps. A house visit
was called for. I drove down Contzen Street looking for
number 905. I found it next to number 28. The Mexicans
seem to carry their house numbers with them when they move.
Mrs. Gonzales came to the door. "Passe," said she hos-
pitably. We sat on straight wooden chairs and she languidly
fanned away the flies.
Mrs. Gonzales was sure she could speak no English, but
I knew enough Spanish to say that I understood that Amalia
was home with the mumps. Mrs. Gonzales smiled sweetly
and said that Amalia was home, but not sick. To prove this
she produced "Amalia." I looked the child over carefully.
There was no faintest evidence of mumps or anything else
but perfect health. "Is this Amalia?" I asked.
Mrs. Gonzales nodded smiling, "Si, Senorita, Amalia."
I looked around me. It was a two-room house, with a
dark cubicle in the rear. I decided to stay a little longer.
After some ten minutes of polite conversation about cab-
bages and kings, I saw a little bronze-faced girl peeping
through the opening into the back room. Around her head
was a white handkerchief, tied at the top so that it looked
like the ears of an Easter bunny. I had found Amalia.
Mrs. Gonzales was not in the least disconcerted. She
merely smiled and nodded, "Si, Amalia," and amiably agreed
to keep the child properly isolated. But of course she didn't,
as I discovered through a couple of unexpected calls.
County school work is one of our most important activi-
ties. We start with the doctor's examination, where carious
teeth, diseased tonsils, and the frequently resulting weak
hearts, beside a variety of other defects, often are discovered
long before a child would be taken to his family doctor.
It is the nurse's job to see the parents of the children and
to persuade them to have the defects corrected promptly.
When the family is unable to pay for private care the
necessary treatments are given with the aid of welfare or
charitable organizations, which pay hospital bills, and
through the endless charity of private physicians.
Beside home calls, the nurse makes periodic inspections
of the schools for minor ailments and signs of infectious and
contagious diseases. The nurse diagnoses no case of com-
municable disease, but excludes the child on suspicion. She
also checks weights and when they drop more than 10 per-
cent below normal looks for the underlying cause. If the
family has no funds for a private physician the child is
brought into the office for further examination. It may be a
case of improper diet and health habits, which only needs
the cooperation of the family ; again tuberculin testing may
show serious trouble. In that case the child is X-rayed, and,
if the findings warrant, is offered preventorium care.
The prenatal clinic is another branch of public health
work which holds great satisfaction for the nurse. Many
fatalities may be avoided if expectant mothers receive the
proper care in time. I often wonder if more public health
nurses would not be the answer to the high maternal mor-
tality rates of backward communities.
Not long ago my duties brought me into contact with
Chief Tomaso of the Yaqui Indian village on the outskirts
of town. These Yaquis are political refugees from Mexico.
There is a price on their heads; they would be shot if they
returned. Their houses are made of bits of sheet iron, flat-
tened tin cans and adobe. Their civilization is that of a
previous age. Therefore, when a couple of cases of typhoid
fever developed in their village the health department went
into prompt action. Sanitary inspectors examined their wells
and out-houses. I was sent out to immunize.
I conferred with Chief Tomaso, and we rounded up the
town. Men, women and children came to the schoolhouse
for their first "shot." But when time came for the second,
only women and children showed up. The braves weren't
having any more; their arms had been too sore.
I packed up my syringes and the chief and I started out.
We found the braves lounging in the sun against the walls
of their houses. They scorned even to look at us. Tomaso
is a good fighter, but it took much argument to induce these
men to offer their arms for further "torture." Finally we
drove up to a house where a huge warlike brave was sun-
ning himself. He did not get up but stared at us insolently.
Tomaso and I got out and walked over to him, and still he
sat and stared. I told him what I wanted in English and
then in my best Spanish, but he only turned and spat into
the dust. Then Tomaso began.
All the invectives of the Spanish and Indian languages,
with an occasional salting of English, flowed out from him.
The man got to his feet. They began an argument which it
was probably as well that I could not understand. But the
man was adamant, and Tomaso in a fury of outraged au-
thority stamped back to the car. As a parting thrust he
shouted, "All right! You won't take the 'shot'? Then by
God you pack up. I send you back to Mexico. You get shot
down there, all right." The man came over to the car and
bared his arm. I didn't look, but I have an idea his teeth
were also bared.
I WOULD not give the impression that only very back-
ward people are helped by public health activities, for
that is not the case. I told a friend of mine about immuniz-
ing the Yaqui village. His comment was, "And we have
to pay for that."
"It was cheaper than having an epidemic of typhoid
spread through the city, wasn't it?" I asked, and he agreed
that it was.
Public health nursing is my job. I have no regrets for the
decision taken that steaming summer night when I saw the
laundry brought in out of the rain ahead of the children.
Remembering how, on private duty, I used to watch a
single pulse day after day for signs of returning health, I
sometimes ask myself, "Whose pulse are you watching
now?" And because I believe that we cannot be a healthy
country unless all our people, high and low, are healthy, I
smile at my own temerity and answer myself, "Maybe, just
maybe, it's the pulse of the U. S. A."
Anyway public health nursing is my job, thank goodness.
MAY 1937
143
"Luck Isn't Enough
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
FOR days now Miss Bailey had been picking up
"leads" on Mrs. Botts — a hearty story or a homely
aphorism attributed to her; the admission, sometimes
a little grudging, that "she does get things done." To meet
her in person seemed worth the long drive into the "down
county" where Mrs. Botts was director of public welfare.
"Just what is Mrs. Botts, why is Mrs. Botts?" she asked
young Mr. Benton, her long-suffering escort.
"We — ell," he replied guardedly, "a lot of people
wouldn't call her a social worker."
A lot of people wouldn't call Miss Bailey a social worker
either, so that wasn't getting very far.
"Why not? She's doing social work isn't she?" Mr. Ben-
ton registered awareness that he was being drawn out.
"Sure she's doing social work, but she couldn't tell you
how or why to save her life. She's just a natural."
"One of those good-hearted, sympathetic home-bodies
. . ." began Miss Bailey.
"Not on your life. She runs her own farm, milks the
cows every morning and doesn't always stop to change her
shoes before she drives fifteen miles to her office. Every odd-
jobber in the county has worked for her at one time or an-
other. She's had a finger in every pie for twenty years. She
knows that county and that county knows her."
"All the local prejudices at her finger tips," put in Miss
Bailey.
"Sure, and all the local friendlinesses too," countered
Mr. Benton. "Don't forget that knowing works more ways
than one. In counties like this you've got to know the prej-
udices else you'll find yourself out on a limb and won't
know why. You don't have to act on 'em but you have to
know 'em and know when to duck 'em and when to buck
'em. It seems to me that a lot of good social workers miss
their step when they don't turn that insight of theirs onto
all the people of the community as well as onto the clients.
And if you're asking me I wish they wouldn't be so doggone
sure that their insight is the only one there is. Social work-
ers didn't invent insight you know."
Miss Bailey let that one go by. Anyway here they were
at the courthouse and here, in her little office tucked away
in a corner with the American Legion headquarters, was
Mrs. Botts — in person.
Mrs. Botts, gray-haired, bespectacled, sturdy body planted
on sturdy feet, was just finishing an interview, not too
happy it seemed for the dignified gentleman of the other
part.
"No, Mr. Johnson, t'ain't because they didn't save their
money that all these old folks need help. A lot of 'em had
money saved. And do you know where they had it? In
your bank, Mr. Johnson. If your bank hadn't gone up
higher'n a kite they wouldn't be needing this old age help.
Oh yes, I understand all about it. T'wasn't your fault. But
just the same they put their money in your bank and now
they ain't got it. I guess they don't believe in saving as
much as you do."
Mr. Johnson completed his retreat and Mrs. Botts car-
ried on. "Maybe I shouldn't a' said it, but it's so. Makes
me tired the way the people in this town that have never
missed a meal think the poor folks are getting too much if
they eat regular. And what's the use in saying what they
oughta done when it's too late to do it. Most of us oughta
done a lot of things we didn't. Now ma'am — Miss Bailey
did you say was the name — what can I do for you ?"
For two hours Miss Bailey watched the "natural" at
work. All sorts of people came and went through the
cluttered little office, with Mrs. Botts offering sotto voce
asides and in between observations for Miss Bailey's ears.
"Sure Mrs. Upson, I knew you didn't tell that young
lady from the city about the $6 a month your brother sends
you. What if she did have red finger nails and used big
words, that wasn't anything to be scared of.
("Those girls they sent down from the state office for
the first two months were good but they didn't always ask
the questions that got the right answers, an' they always
looked so dressed up that seemed like it was hard to talk
to 'em.)
""\/"ES, you'll get your check just the same, though we
A have to count in that $6 you know. Fair's fair, and
you've got to be fair if you expect us to be. Now you go
along home and don't worry. Did you get that mosquito
netting tacked up? Good. I'll be down your way next week
an' stop in. How're the children doing now they're getting
more garden stuff? That's fine. No, I won't forget. I'll
stop by.
("Poor woman. Husband got killed walkin' the railroad
track. Three children, and a poor manager. That girl from
the state office didn't mean to, but she got her nervous. She
was scared to tell about that brother in California sending
her $6 because he's on old age and she was afraid it might
get back. How'd I know it? I dunno. You just know things
in a place like this.)
"Well, what you doin' back here, Tom? Now you listen
to me. It's just like I told you. You get your check every
month and I couldn't give you any more if I was to die for
it. The gov'ment is treatin' you like a man and it don't
expect you to act like a beggar. Lost your pocketbook? Aw,
Tom, how many times do you expect me to believe that? I
heard something different. What about last Sat'day night
down at Bill's Place? I dunno how you'll manage this
week. That's your business. The gov'ment gives you your
allowance but it ain't goin' to baby you. And listen, Tom,
if I was you I'd clean up a little around that place o* yours.
I hear the Board of Health was past there, and you don't
want any trouble. The gov'ment says you gotta do your
part. An' if you're smart you'll keep away from Bill's
Place. Hangin' around there ain't ever got you anything
but trouble. You know that 's well as I do.
("Now there's a problem case for you! Old rascal's
'most eighty, been dirty an' shif'less for forty years. Kept
goin' with odd jobs and back door handouts. Fifteen dollars
all at once goes to his head. But the only way I know to
learn him is to let him learn himself. Trouble is that the
folks in this town say, 'Look at old Tom, never was any
good, never will be. An' our good tax money supportin'
him !' Well they supported him before, didn't they, and no-
144
THE SURVEY
body cared how drunk an' dirty he was. Now the whole
town's het up because he throws his garbage in the street
and hangs around Bill's Place. You'd think to hear 'em:
talk that everybody on old age was like old Tom. I say
you've got to take the mean ones along with the good, and
keep in the middle of the road. There'll always be an old
Tom or so, but they ain't the whole story. I guess there's
old Toms every place only if their folks have money they
keep 'em under cover.)
"Good morning, Mr. Filson. Yes, does look like rain
an' we sure need it. Now that's too bad. Y'know I
was afraid that Swan girl wouldn't do for Mrs. Filson.
She's a good girl, but her mother's never taught her much.
Don't know as she could, seein' what a hard time she's had
with all those children an' a no-good man. Yes, I know
Edie's old enough to work and help her mother get off re-
lief, an' she's going to. But maybe an older, more settled
girl would be better for Mrs. Filson, nervous as she is.
Edie Swan wouldn't know anything about housework in a
place like yours. Y'know there's a woman out by Monson's.
you might like to try. She's a good worker and settled. Yes,
you're right. The young folks now'days won't work the
way we used to at their age. They'll learn sometime but I
guess we've just got to let 'em learn for themselves. All
right, I'll tell that woman — Burt's her name — to come to
see Mrs. Filson tomorrow. No-o, she's not on relief right
now, but she was, and she sure needs the work. You'll be
doin' a good act if you take her. Lookin' at it one way it's as
good to keep people from needin' to go on relief as to get
'em off once they're on.
("An" there's another problem case. Mrs. Filson's a good
woman — thinks the relief folks ought to have the work if
there is any. Trouble is nobody's ever been able to suit her.
Everybody in three counties, old and young, has worked for
her one time or 'nother. Now she goes around town saying
relief has spoiled everybody — they don't want to work. Just
the same Edie Swan's got to knuckle down to a job. T'won't
do for her to get a slack name. Guess I'll have to talk to
her again but it's hard for a girl with no more raisin' than
Edie's had, an' not very smart to start with, to be like folks
think she ought to be.)
"TT 7"ELL ma'am, I wish those social workers would tell
VV me what to do about these folks. Maybe if I'd been
to college I'd know better. They say you oughta been to col-
lege. But I don't know. Maybe if I'd been to college I'd
want a job payin' more'n $75 a month. Yes'm that's what
the job pays. It's in the law for this size county.
"How'd I come to get the job?" Mrs. Bolts paused only
a breath and then came out with it. "Well, I s'pose you'd
call it politics. I always got out and worked for the party
and I had something coming to me. I figured I could do the
job and I'm not one to pass up money if it's there to be
had. So I saw the right people and here I am.
"But it's some job! Everybody thinks they know what
you ought to do and how you ought to do it, but nobody
really knows, me least of all. If folks were all alike it would
be different but they never have been and they never will
be, and it's no use treatin' 'em as if they were. And what's
more being on relief or on old age doesn't make people any
different from anybody else. They're good or they're ornery
just because they're that kind of folks. Relief hasn't any-
thing to do with it."
Young Mr. Benton, who had taken very little part in
MAY 1937
ithe conversation, waited till they were out on the long
white road and then burst forth.
"What'd I tell you? Isn't she a natural? What if she
iisn't a social worker? Would you change her?"
"Not one hair of her good gray head," replied Miss Bai-
.ley honestly. "For this county at this stage of the game she's
mndoubtedly a gift from heaven. But heaven isn't always
:so generous. What about that Parsons man yesterday? Re-
member how he barked at the poor old fellow who wandered
in — 'You get out of here and stay out. Can't you see I'm
ibusy?' — and the way he all but wagged his tail when the
'county commissioner put his head in the door? Remember
!his philosophic observation when he finally was convinced
>we weren't a couple of spies? — 'Just two things you gotta
(do in this work, keep an upper hand with the reliefers and
idon't let Washington get anything on you.'
"'"VTOW he was a natural too, Mr. Benton, on the other
•*• * side of your mouth. And if we depend on pulling
maturals out of the hat we're just as apt to get a Parsons as
.a Botts. He, too, got his job by knowing the right people,
and look at him. It seems to me — there I go, talking like a
:social worker — that we can't afford to have these new social
security services of ours manhandled by people like that Par-
:sons. Someway, somehow we have to protect them even if in
the process we lose an occasional Mrs. Botts. We can't trust
to luck ; it isn't good enough."
"But how are you going to do it? Just having a college
(degree doesn't guarantee anything."
"Nothing guarantees anything. But you've got to start
somewhere and the best starting point anyone has found
so far is education. You see what we need is a straining
iprocess to drain off the Parsons ilk. Education is only one
mesh. There must be another to assure at least a respectable
speaking acquaintance with the experience developed in this
field over the years, and certainly there must be a mesh that
•will shake out the people who have no natural capacity for
getting along with other people. The psychologists have a
word for it."
"But how are you going to get all that going in a county-
like this when the job is crowding you every minute?"
"You can't, not the first crack. But you can know what
you want and aim at it and agitate for it. You don't have
to have a law or even a system to make merit the measure
of a jobholder in these services. You only have to convince
the right people, not even everybody at first — just the right
ones. I'll tell you sometime about a state where the whole
social service set-up is practically poised on the point of a
pin, yet the right people got the right idea and when that
state gets a permanent set-up, as it surely will, a merit sys-
tem will be a matter of course. It may not be a perfect one
but it will be a start in the right direction."
"But what about Mrs. Botts? You wouldn't throw her
out now would you?"
"Throw her out! I'd thank the Lord for her. I'd— I'd
cross her with a Ph.D. from Chicago and perpetuate the
species. But we can't afford to let one Mrs. Botts be the
salt on the tail of all the Mr. Parsons. They're the birds
we have to look out for, and they'll eat us up unless we do."
This is the fifth of the new series of articles, "-Miss Bailey
Says . . .," in which that veteran of the emergency relief or-
ganization sums up the results of her first hand observations
of the actual operation of the social security services over the
country and of her discussions with workers dose in to the job.
145
BEHAVIOR AS IT IS BEHAVED-VII
The Evolution of Garra Perna
By ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE
SHE entered highschool as plain Car-
rie Perkins, with all the meaning
that can be packed into the word
plain. A more awkward, slow-witted,
uncouth little freshman would be hard
to find. If ever a girl seemed born to be
an uncomplaining farm drudge, weeding,
washing milkcans, and tending a roadside
vegetable stall muffled in an old gray
sweater, Carrie was that girl. In fact,
except for short terms at country school,
that had been her life. Her preparation
for highschool was so pitifully inade-
quate that one marveled at the stubborn
streak that made her try for further
education against such enormous odds.
Dresses were worn short that year, but
Carrie's gray gingham hung down to her
ankles. Either she did not know what
was wrong with it or did not know how
to change 'it, though in a helpless sort of
way she seemed aware of its queerness.
In an agony of shyness she slipped along
the school corridors, as old women slip
past city garbage cans, with sidelong
glances. She was unquestionably the
school scarecrow, and likely to remain
so until she flunked out.
And then gym classes began. Carrie,
in her gray gingham, appeared on the
gym floor with the same passivity with
which she approached everything else
that she was told to do-— and couldn't. Of
course she owned no gym suit, but the
teacher, forewarned of the situation, had
an old one ready and sent her to the
locker room to put it on, herself sternly
repressing an impulse to smile at the
grotesque figure Carrie made.
The line formed, stood in position, and
was ready for directions as Carrie
emerged from the locker room and took
her place silently and humbly at the very
end. The instructor gave her a glance
and was reassured. Without her dreary
dress, Carrie exhibited a lithe muscular
figure hardened by outdoor exercise,
with legs that carried her weight easily,
as if they were used to it.
The regular routine began accom-
panied by the usual freshman giggles.
Carrie, of course, had no one to giggle
with and merely did as she was told but
with such soldierly precision that the
teacher concluded that she had done it
before.
The last quarter-hour was for esthetic
dancing. "Take this position. Right
arm up. Left down. Weight on right
foot. Point left toe," called the teacher.
The line tried to follow but flopped this
way and that, losing either balance,
breath or interest. All but Carrie.
Ego Expansion
What is your sense of the meaning of
the word ego? Why has it ordinarily
a bad connotation? Is the feeling of
power to accomplish properly described
as egotistic? Does not civilization de-
pend upon it?
Have you ever felt the urge to do
something which you knew you could
do? Was it powerful, comparable to
sex emotion? To parental feeling?
Did you suffer if you were balked in
it? Does successful action seem a nec-
essary part of your life?
Have you observed any powerful
"ego urge" in anyone you know? In a
historical character? In a national
group? In a religious group? In a po-
litical group?
Does the urge toward ego expansion
account for the rise of dictators? Is the
"ego urge" in itself admirable? Or does
its social value depend on other factors
than itself? Compare it in this respect
with art-expression, wit, sex.
Carrie claimed that she was uncon-
scious of her urge for self expansion.
Is such an urge usually known to the
individual concerned, and correctly in-
terpreted? (For example: Mussolini,
Father Divine, Aimee McPherson.) Or
is the motive of an action usually un-
known to the one who acts?
SUGGESTED READING:
MEHRAN K. THOMSON: SPRINGS OF HU-
MAN ACTION.
SIGMUND FREUD: CIVILIZATION AND ITS
DISCONTENTS.
GREGORY ZILBOORG: Atlantic Monthly.
September 1936. AGGRESSION — SAVAGE AND
DOMESTICATED.
FREDERICK H. LUND: EMOTIONS OF MEN.
Biographies of NAPOLEON; ISADORA DUNCAN;
SCHUEMAN; HELEN KELLER; PUPIN;
KEATS.
There she stood, lightly poised on the
ball of her right foot, her left toe point-
ing to, but not touching the ground, her
arms as gracefully fixed as Flora on a
fountain lifting a festoon of flowers.
"Hold it, Carrie," called the instruc-
tor. "Look at her, girls. What's the
matter with the rest of you? Haven't
you any muscles?" Carrie held her pose,
as a valiant tenor holds his high C. "All
right, Carrie. Take a rest. You see,
she's got lungs and legs. You need both
of them for dancing. Come up to the
head of the class, Carrie, where you can
model for the others."
Without a word or a smile, Carrie
dropped her arms and stepped lightly to
the head of the line. It was probably
the first time in her life that she tasted
the satisfaction of being a success. The
rest of the hour belonged to Carrie.
With the accuracy of a soldier she did
exactly as she was told, without panting
or one false motion. To disciplined pre-
cision she added the flexible ease of a
wild animal. All the girls were gener-
ous enough to admit her triumph.
"Gee, you're swell," they chorused in
the locker room. "Ever had dancing
lessons?"
Carrie shook her head, shyness closing
in on her like a black cloud.
As the girls trooped out of the gym
the teacher called Carrie back.
"Why are you so good?" she asked.
"Ever lived anywhere but on your
farm?" Carrie flushed and managed to
get out, "No, ma'am."
"Any of your family taught you to
dance?"
"My grandfather was in a circus in
the old country."
"So that's it," exclaimed the teacher.
"For Heaven's sake, child, don't be
ashamed of it. You've probably got him
to thank for a fine physique and muscu-
lar control. We never knew it because
your dress covered it up. Don't you
ever wear that dress again. Come along
home with me now and let's try your
hair a different way, and I have a dress
I think would be awfully becoming to
you."
"My mother . . ." Carrie hung back.
"Don't let's worry about that now. I
expect she'd be glad to see you dressed
like the other girls. Suppose I drive you
home this afternoon and get acquainted
with her, and tell her how good you are
in gym."
The afternoon session saw a trans-
figured though still inarticulate Carrie.
Her hair instead of being twisted up
in a doleful bird's nest was bound
around her head in a coronet braid. A
neat blue linen dress revealed her shape-
ly legs. Tennis shoes replaced the high-
laced black boots which her mother had
inherited from the last place where she
had worked. At recess the girls gathered
around twittering.
"How can you dance so well if you've
never danced before?"
146
THE SURVEY
Poor Carrie! All she could bring out
was, "I'm pretty strong."
Carrie Perkins literally danced her
way through highschool. In order to
stay in the gym classes, she worked like
a beaver to pass in the academic subjects
for which she had scant preparation and
slight relish. She danced through the
May Days, the carnivals, the school
benefits, right up to graduation. At
this event the faculty made an exception
and allowed her to give an exhibition
dance instead of an essay. She created
her own dance, and performed it with
such exuberant gaiety and grace that the
audience cheered and clapped and
cheered again. The gym teacher, re-
membering the dun cocoon from which
this bright butterfly had burst forth,
pinched herself to make sure she was
awake. Down in the front row Carrie's
old grandfather grinned and tapped the
floor with his stick.
I see Carrie's name in the papers now
and then, when she puts on a pageant or
arranges dances for summer operas, or
for the dedication of a new stadium. But
it is no longer Carrie Perkins. It is
Carra Perna, who brings down the house
with her dancing of elfish, outlandish
steps which, she says, she learned from
her old-world grandfather.
The question often discussed, but
never settled, by her former teacher is,
"Where, when Carrie Perkins entered
highschool, was Carra Perna hidden
away?" Carrie claims that she never
knew that Carra existed, nor why she —
Carrie — persisted in a schooling which
she liked so little. Was Carra Perna
there all the time — shrouded in gray
gingham, restlessly pounding on Carrie's
prison bars, forcing her to dance, deter-
mined to be free?
With this issue THE SURVEY concludes
this series of sketches, drawn from an
unpublished boot, described by the auth-
or as "life occurrences without label."
[See THE SURVEY, November 1936,
page 333.] Order and arrangement were
by the editors.
On Giving Away $1,000,000
MY DEAR SIR: Since you are a retired
business man I assume that the million
dollars you now wish to leave to your
community represents the profits made
from your business. I cannot imagine that
the business was a one, or even two or
three man affair. Rather do I assume that
a considerable number of persons have
worked for you over the years in which
you have accumulated the million dollars
now to be given away. If I am right in
that assumption the counsel I would of-
fer you is this, that you put aside all
thought of a memorial of a philanthropic
nature and that you set about to dis-
tribute a part of your fortune to the hu-
man beings who gave of their daily toil
toward its accumulation.
Let me say at once that I am not of
those who clamor for a distribution of
so-called surplus wealth with the thought
that such distribution would bring answer
to the insecurity which is the lot of a
large part of the working population dur-
ing most of their years. Yet from my
years of observation of people and of
analysis of the situations that bring them
sometimes easily, yet more often reluct-
antly to relief organizations, I do believe
that the large majority of such people
would have found it quite unnecessary to
turn to this or that organization for as-
sistance of any kind, if over their work-
ing years they had received the whole
product of their labor.
What, you may rightly ask me, shall
determine that "whole product?" I would
answer, surplus profits, defining as sur-
plus profits which should go to those
whose labor has helped to produce them,
all receipts over and above those required
to meet all proper liabilities. Such liabili-
ties would, of course, include your own
share of the receipts in recognition of
the contribution made to the business by
capital invested, by your forethought,
your inventiveness, without which the be-
ginning and development of the particular
business would not have been possible.
Your experience as a successful busi-
ness man should enable you to determine
under what rulings such distribution now
can be made. My suggestion would be
that you list all persons who have worked
for you for any substantial period, per-
haps for a year or more and then, on
some equable basis, determined probably
by the amount of wages received by each
person as a measure of his usefulness
to the business, distribute among those
persons the determined percentage of the
surplus profit represented by the million
dollars of which you mean to dispose.
If on the list are employes who have died
since their period of service with you,
their share in the distributed funds
should go to the surviving members of
their families. No conditions must be at-
tached to the acceptance of the money.
Real men want what they earn. This,
then, the first part of my plan for the
distribution of your fortune.
Following it, and assuming that the
business by which you accumulated your
fortune is still in operation, I suggest
that the balance of your million dollars
be used to study and to set up a surplus
profit-sharing program by which present
and future employes shall from time to
time receive the whole product of their
On its merits and with no apologies be-
cause it failed of the prize, The Survey
offers the letter submitted by William
H. Matthews, of the New York Asso-
ciation for the Improvement of the
Condition of the Poor, in the contest
sponsored by the Atlantic Monthly at
the request of a retired business man
for a plan by which he might usefully
return a million dollars to the com-
munity in which he had acquired it.
labor,' a program by which a worker
could come to regard himself as a prop-
erty owner by reason of his participation
in the business.
Why do I believe that those who have
worked for you over the years would
spend wisely the whole product of their
labor? My first answer is that whether
a man spends wisely or otherwise should
have nothing to do with his receiving all
that he earns. My second answer is that
we can never hope to have a community
of free men except as we assume that
the average human being has the desire
and intelligence to manage his own per-
sonal life. You have evidently weathered
the present and perhaps other business
depressions by reason of profits accumu-
lated in good years. Many others have
done likewise. But that is not true of a
host of men and women who give their
best in the way of toil whenever oppor-
tunity offers. We must assume that had
they received the whole product of their
labor they too would have accumulated
sufficient to meet periods of industrial
slackness, to combat illness, to insure
themselves against this or that untoward
happening. They would not have been
compelled to turn to relief lines, which,
under one guise or another have spread
a blanket of pauperization over the land.
I could, my dear sir, suggest to you
a dozen programs, some of which are
part of my today's work, for the allevia-
tion of present and the prevention of fu-
ture poverty. They would, I believe, have
merit. Instead I offer as a far bigger and
finer adventure a program that will clear
the road for the release of individual in-
itiative and enterprise, along which men
will travel freed from the fear of in-
security. Thus you will give challenge
and set example for others to follow.
Thus you will demonstrate faith in the
doctrine that the average man, if treated
greatly, will in turn prove himself great.
WILLIAM H. MATTHEWS
MAY 1937
147
CELEBRATING THE TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR OF SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC
^Anniversary Project
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
To aid this JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK ride circuit
in American communities everywhere
"// wishes were horses, beggars might ride!"
A'TER. all, there's good riding in good wishes —
for a prospectus such as ours, which must carry
what might be dubbed a beggar's wallet at its saddle-
bow. Perhaps the old saw. stands to be rewritten
anyway in this age of motor cars and cooperative
effort. Certainly in putting our Midmonthly proj-
ect before you, we are rich at the start in the stream-
lined energy of conviction with which leaders in
social agencies and community organizations have
given their endorsement on pages 150 and 151.
From the outset, The Midmonthly Survey has
spanned the fields of social work. Social invention
has not by any means been left in the dust by
mechanical invention. Social responsibility has deep-
ened; social techniques gather head; social organi-
zation takes on new and creative forms. You are
part of it all. We can count on you to be very much
alive to how much more is called for nowadays to
cover these fields, or to reach and serve their par-
ticipants in your community, than when our first
Midmonthly Survey came from the press in 1922.
For this is a double anniversary. We are celebrating
not only 25 years of Survey Associates, as a national
social agency, but 15 years of this modern service
periodical which sprang from educational and pub-
lishing activities that indeed go back for half a
century.
Midmonthly Survey carries its budget of
J- news, ideas and experience, twelve times a year,
to every state in the union. It reaches well over 15,-
000 subscribers; four or five times that number of
readers. For 3000 copies go to libraries — an unusual
showing; and many more than that are available
for office reading through social agencies. Over
12,000 copies go each month to such agencies, to
social workers and volunteers, to board, committee
and commission members, and to citizens who are
up to their elbows in community activities.
To all these, and the societies, institutions, chests
and councils with which they are identified, this
148
prospectus is especially directed. Our objectives in
this anniversary project are three-fold:
(1) To enhance the service that is compact in every
issue of The Midmonthly Survey in ways that will
take full advantage of the times.
(2) To extend its reading in every American com-
munity in ways that will reinforce the work that
goes forward there in this period of social adjust-
ment.
(3) To lift .-contributions to our Midmonthly Fund
from a meagre $2280 in 1936, to a modest $10,-
000 in 1937 by soliciting individual and agency
contributions to these ends. From you and yours
for example.
ET us look at these objectives in the light of the
opportunity before us, bearing in mind that
Survey Associates have no endowment, no angel, no
annual drives; but only a centipede-like faculty for
pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps of mutual
interest and a common concern.
Like concentric rings out from Washington, since
the country was plunged into the stark miseries of
the depression, have come unemployment relief,
works programs and now the social securities. We
are witnessing the spread of public welfare depart-
ments, city, county, state and (in prospect) federal.
There has been nothing like it since the spread of
public education bristled with similar promise and
similar shortcomings. Not only has all this made
a draft on the personnel of social work: it has been
a charge on lay and professional leadership, on
swift mobilizations of local and national opinion to
urge, to criticise, keep politics at its distance and
shape administration constructively. These public
developments have trebled our load in supplying
dependable information and gauging far flung activi-
ties through The Midmonthly Survey and in afford-
ing opportunity for the keenest sort of first hand
discussion. We have added a second full time editor
to the Midmonthly staff. In "Miss Bailey Says," we
carried out a scheme of adult education among hun-
dreds of newcomers on emergency jobs; and now,
in collaboration with the American Public Welfare
THE SURVEY
Association, we are projecting the series in newer
and more permanent fields.
But this is only half the story. As part of the proc-
ess of recovery, there is every anticipation of a
revival of initiative regionally and locally. Communi-
ties are feeling their muscle. Private activities have
adjustments to make with the public setup; taxation
affects fund-raising; industrial unrest throws up
fresh problems. Surveys and inventories take stock.
New methods and inter-relationships win their way.
(For example, see Mrs. Wembridge's series, "Be-
havior As It Is Behaved," as an all round overture
to the resurgent interest in mental hygiene) . Again,
such voluntary developments augment our load of
work. The Midmonthly Survey takes on more and
more significance as a shuttle of understanding not
only among social workers but among the men and
women to whose insight and support community
leadership must look. Your own agency for one.
Right there is the nib of our opportunity — and your
share in it — to enhance our service and yours, and
extend their reach.
One version was put in a recent letter from Earl
N. Parker, secretary of the Community Fund of
Seattle. You may recall that the National Con-
ference of Social Work meets there in 1938, and
Mr. Parker proffered us help in increasing our read-
ers in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. "It's not an
onerous task," he wrote, "to do what we can to boost
The Survey, because it is constantly fostering
thoughtful consideration of social progress both in
the large and the particular." And he added:
"We need very much to widen the circle of those who
are keeping informed as to the broad developments in the
whole social work field so that my interest in this is both
selfish and one of helpfulness to The Survey."
THAT is typical of the collaboration we prize.
Time, work, friendliness, information, reports,
articles, freely given, make The Midmonthly Survey a
living thing. Yet the work that goes into it is at once in-
dependent and integrating. It is not an organ though
it has a funnybone. It is in a sense an exchange, draw-
ing on all parts of the country and all the fields we
span; a medium for interplay between such fields as
have their own specialized journals. But its essential
bent is original, no less than coordinating, and calls
for extensive correspondence, exacting digest, for
travel, investigation and close-in writing.
What can be done and how to do it may be fash-
ioned in one place ; through our pages it can be taken
over elsewhere. We search out innovations and prin-
ciples worked out by one agency and adaptable by
others. Yet here is an exchange for ideas and ex-
periments which have no trade market. Unfor-
tunately for us, neither case work nor group work
resort to advertising! The one thing that distin-
guished the earlier periodicals that were merged in
MAY 1937
The Survey was an inveterate propensity for deficits.
Had it been a plumber's journal, the combined ven-
ture would have been worth a million dollars.
Facing this quandary, the founders of Survey
Associates put our publishing operations on a busi-
ness basis; but, at the same time, they set out to
enlist cooperating members and contributors, as for
any other welfare or educational agency, to support
our non-commercial activities and to make for
growth. We have entered our 25th year with some-
thing over 1600 members who thus back up their
interest by contributions of $10, $25, $50 or $100 or
more annually to the work. They totaled last year
$62,649; while magazine subscriptions, sales and
advertising brought in $80,695. They turn not only
The Midmonthly Survey but Survey Graphic (as a
magazine of social interpretation, with its more
than 20,000 subscribers, and its special numbers
which have reached circulations of 40,000 and 50,000)
from mere scrapbooks of good will into forces for ed-
ucation and social progress. Two of our 25th anniver-
sary goals are to bring our members to 2500; our
subscribers to 25,000 in 1937. Then, to build on that.
'HpAKE our Midmonthly as a journal of social
J_ work. In 1936 publishing receipts of $35,410
more than met its publishing maintenance, but they
fell short by $7728 in carrying the things it lives and
grows by. We had to forego editorial assignments
which because of expense no less than distance were
beyond our reach; had to cramp our circulation ef-
forts. Through field workers who attend confer-
ences, speak at staff meetings, and the like, we have
developed an unusual type of promotion which takes
in a dollar for every dollar spent. That ratio is wel-
comed by general magazines which look to their
advertising to cover the cost of filling the subscrip-
tions. We must find it from another source; find
also fresh means to enhance our service to readers
in these times, when our general funds are hard
pressed and the claims upon us are incessant.
That source lies in the interest and support of in-
dividuals and agencies who want to see The Mid-
monthly Survey live and grow; who recognize that
every new reader increases by one the body of in-
formed opinion; who see it as a carrier of intel-
ligence that has little more than scratched the sur-
face of its possibilities. Something worth its salt as
an instrument of enlightenment — worth bringing to
higher calibre and before wider groups of people.
'"T'HESE are the objectives of our midmonthly
J_ project; the focus of our appeal to you to join
forces with us in 'this anniversary year. The tax on any
one individual or agency is light. The total is small.
Without such fresh support we will be crippled
before we start; but with good backing, no less than
good wishes, The Midmonthly Survey can in good time
ride circuit in American communities everywhere.
149
AGENCY MEMBERS OF SURVEY ASSOCIATES
ENDORSEMENTS
American City Bureau, Inc. Chicago, 1
American Public Welfare Association
Associated Jewish Philanthropies Boston, Mass.
Associated Welfare Agencies Springfield, 111.
Association of Junior Leagues of America New York, N. Y.
Baltimore Federation of Churches Baltimore, Md.
Boston Council of Social Agencies Boston, Mass.
Brooklyn A.I.C.P. Brooklyn, N. Y.
Brooklyn Bureau of Charities Brooklyn, N. Y.
Bureau of Maternal & Child Health Trenton, N. J.
Canton Welfare Federation Canton, Ohio
Chicago Commons Chicago, 111.
Children's Aid Association Boston, Mass.
Children's Aid Society Buffalo, N. Y.
Children's Aid Society of Pa. Philadelphia, Pa.
Children's Bureau Philadelphia, Pa.
Children's Village Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.
Children's Welfare Federation New York, N. Y.
Cleveland Children's Bureau Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland Foundation Cleveland, Ohio
Community Chest St. Joseph, Mo.
Community Chest San Diego, Calif.
Community Chest San Francisco, Calif.
Community Chest Tampa, Fla.
Community Chest Washington, D. C.
Community Union Madison, Wis.
Community Welfare Federation Wilkes-Barre; Pa.
Council of Social Agencies Pasadena, Calif.
Council of Social Agencies Buffalo, N. Y.
Council of Social Agencies Cincinnati, Ohio
Dayton Bureau of Community Service & Community Chest
Dayton, Ohio
Detroit League for the Handicapped Detroit, Mich.
Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund Chicago, 111.
Family Service Society Buffalo, N. Y.
Family Service Society New Orleans, La.
Family Society of Philadelphia Philadelphia, Pa.
Family Welfare Association Baltimore, Md.
Family Welfare Organization, Inc. Allentown. Pa.
Family Welfare Society Rochester, N. Y.
Federation of Jewish Philanthropies Pittsburgh, Pa.
Franklin Street Settlement Detroit, Mich.
Girl Scouts, Inc. New York, N. Y.
Hyde Park Library Dutchess County, N. Y.
Irene Kaufman Settlement Pittsburgh, Pa.
Jewish Board of Guardians New York, N. Y.
Jewish Home Finding Society Chicago, III.
Jewish Orphans Home Los Angeles, Calif.
Jewish Social Service Association New York, N. Y.
Jewish Welfare Federation Cleveland, Ohio
Labor Co-operative Educational & Publishing Society
Washington, D. C.
Loyal Order of Moose Mooseheart, III.
Maternity Center Association New York, N. Y.
Merrill-Palmer School Detroit, Mich.
Methodist Children's Home Society Detroit, Mich.
Montefiore Hospital Pittsburgh, Pa.
New England Home for Little Wanderers Boston, Mass.
New Haven Community Chest New Haven, Conn.
New York Guild for Jewish Blind Yonkers, N. Y.
New York School of Social Work New York, N. Y.
Ohio Humane Society Cincinnati, Ohio
Pittsfield Community Fund Association Pittsfield, Mass.
Playground Athletic League, Inc. Baltimore, Md.
Provident Loan & Savings Society Detroit, Mich.
Publicity Dept., Detroit Community Fund Detroit, Mich.
Railway Clerk Cincinnati, Ohio
Red Cross Cleveland, Ohio
Research Work Dept., Community Chest Cincinnati, Ohio
Roxbury Neighborhood House Roxbury, Mass.
St. Paul Community Chest, Inc. St. Paul, Minn.
Salvation Army San Francisco, Calif.
Seattle Community Fund Seattle, Wash.
Social Service Federation Englewood, N. J.
Society of St. Vincent de Paul Detroit, Mich.
State Child Welfare Commission Pierre, S. Dakota
Stuyvesant Neighborhood House New York, N. Y.
Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association San Francisco, Calif.
Tulsa Community Fund Tulsa, Okla.
Visiting Nurse Association Detroit, Mich.
Welfare Federation Cleveland, Ohio
Welfare Federation Newark, N. J.
Western Reserve Academy Hudson, Ohio
Wieboldt Foundation Chicago, 111.
Young Men's Christian Association New York, N. Y.
150
The Midmonthly Surrey attaches itself to my office routine
like the morning newspaper to my breakfast.
PIERCE ATWATER, executive secretary Saint Paul Community Chest
The Midmonthly Survey ought to be read by every social
worker. It is the best thing of its kind in existence.
RICHARD C. CABOT, M.O., founder of Hospital Social Service
After the world-wide voyage with the Surrey Graphic, the
Midmonthly brings us into our home port where we feel the
pull of the routine job and have steadying contact with folks.
Each is indispensable, but the Midmonthly is we at work.
(MRS. JOHN M.) MARY WILLCOX GLENN, former president, Family
Welfare Association of America; New York City
Information based on thorough-going research, absolutely
accurate interpretation in a readable form, is made available
through The Survey.
SOLOMON LOWENSTEIN, executive vice-president Federation for the
Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City
For years I have turned to the Midmonthly Survey for current
information about social work. It has been invaluable to me
as a source both of news and of ideas.
KARL DE SCHWEINITZ, executive director Emergency Relief Board,
State of Pennsylvania; Harrisburg
The Midmonthly Surrey carries to every field of service some
of the significant developments in all. This is an important
service to anyone concerned with the community aspects of
social work. We need to be kept informed of the fresh attacks
being made on old problems, and of the new problems which
are constantly arising. Best wishes to Survey Associates in
increasing the participation of social agencies in its coopera-
tive enterprise.
LEA D. TAYLOR, head resident Chicago Commons
The appearance of The Survey on our library shelves is like
a badge of distinction. Its use by students and other consul-
tants is constant. It is likewise the writer's guide, philosopher
and friend. -- ---
ELMER SCOTT, executive secretary Civic Federation of Dallas, Texas
Most of us are so immersed in our day-to-day jobs that we
sorely need perspective. To me the Midmonthly isn't just an
ordinary tool ; it is a field-glass through which social workers
can see what is being done, both near and far, and can discern
the directions in which social work is moving.
J^£^<^-^-^^\ <=^>«-^
EARL N. PARKER, executive secretary Seattle Community Fund
THE SURVEY
I am glad to endorse heartily the appeal to social agencies and
social welfare leaders to support generously the Midmonthly
Surrey. To me this magazine is the authoritative and most
comprehensive house organ of all social work. No agency or
leader can afford to be without it or neglect reading it. What-
ever its publication costs the social agencies and leaders of
the country ought gladly to contribute. In the work of Com-
munity Chests and Councils I find it indispensable and I
cannot see how local leaders can but feel the same.
Oi£Ct-n_ /• £}i+*>~^4.
ALLEN T. BURNS, executive vice-president Community Chests and
Councils, New York City
The Survey Midmonthly has contributed uniquely to the es-
tablishment of social work as a national, unified factor in
social progress; and it has given social work a courage and
perspective that holds it ever on the road of exploration and
adventure.
FRANK J. BRUNO, director department of social work, Washington
University, St. Louis
I am delighted to learn that the splendid service now rendered
by the Midmonthly Surrey is about to be still further en-
hanced. A running record of the varied developments of
social work on a national scale will be invaluable not only to
social workers but also to board members and other public-
spirited citizens. This broader usefulness to agencies, coun-
cils and public departments, should make readily attainable
in contributions, the $10,000 necessary for The Midmonthly
Fund.
MONSIGNOR ROBERT F. KEEGAN, executive director, Catholic Chari-
ties of New York
The Surrey Midmonthly is indispensable to those who desire
to keep abreast of the social service movements in this country
and elsewhere. It did essential service in reinforcing public
and private social work during the depression. Generous sup-
port must be forthcoming so that its usefulness may be con-
tinued and so that it may take full advantage of the opportu-
nities for leadership and interpretation during the days of
social readjustment just ahead.
C. M. BOOKMAN, executive vice-chairman Community Chest, Cin-
cinnati
The Survey Midmonthly is essenial reading for everyone who
wishes to keep up with current developments in social work
or the social aspects of education, health, industry or organ-
ized community life. It is practical, accurate, concise, vivid
and constructive. It is unique in this field and indispensable
to those who would know that field,
ELWOOD STREET, director of public welfare, District of Columbia
I wish to lose no time in writing you the fact that the Mid-
monthly Survey is a magazine of interest and value to me ...
in keeping track of what people are thinking and organiza-
tions are doing. It seems to me that you really ought not to
have any trouble selling the value of the Midmonthly to every-
one interested in social service.
The Surrey is of highest value to social workers, public offi-
cials and intelligent citizens who wish to keep abreast of
affairs in community, nation and the world. It is a clearing
house of essential information, and an interpreter of signifi-
cat developments in contemporary society at home and abroad.
&**sr.
DR. GEORGE E. VINCENT, chairman Hospital Survey Committee of
United Hospital Fund, New York City
The social workers, like the rest of us, need constant educa-
tion. I do not know any place where you can get a better and
fairer presentation of social and economic problems of the
day from a social viewpoint, than in The Survey— and there is
so much material it takes the Midmonthly to cover it. The
rest of us need it, too.
CHARLES P. TAFT, lawyer and member City Charter Commission,
Cincinnati
There has recently been discovered, near the shore of San
Francisco Bay, a brass plate, inscribed and left by Sir Francis
Drake on his venturesome voyage over 350 years ago, briefly
indicating his vision (which was not to be realized) of the
future of the land he had discovered. It has been said that he
sailed away leaving an empire behind him hidden by a veil
of fog.
The millions who now occupy that empire still encounter
fogs, but they are of human creation and can be dissipated
The caravel of The Surrey is dedicated to that service; thus it
explores a different world from that of Drake and the Golden
Hinde, and its records have more significance for their readers
than that story "writ in brasse."
The extension of its Midmonthly voyage to wider horizons
should arouse the enthusiasm of all who are interested in the
navigation of today's windy seas.
O. K. GUSHING, member of the San Francisco Bar
Social agencies, chests, funds, and councils can strengthen
their own work by sustaining the Midmonthly Survey. It
brings country-wide experience to their doorsteps.
JACOB BILLIKOPF, director National Coordinating Committee for Aid
to Refugees from Germany
Those of us who are trying to serve our communities through
social, religious and educational agencies— whether as volun-
teers or as professional workers— need a good general medium
of interpretation and leadership. It should help us to discover
the underlying unity of spirit and methods in our various
forms of work. It should aid us in relating our efforts to pub-
lic and other social developments of ever-increasing scope
and significance. The Midmonthly has been this sort of thing
for many years. It can continue on an even more satisfying
level with more extensive enrollment by those who should be
its readers and users. The anniversary extension project
should more than succeed. The Midmonthly is indispensable
to well planned work in any community!
JOEL D. HUNTER, general superintendent United Charities of Chicago
J. E. SPROUL, program executive National Council of Young Men's
Christian Associations
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
MAY 1937
112 EAST 19TH STREET
NEW YORK CITY
151
The Common Welfare
Counting the Jobless
EiTE in April the suggestion of a whirlwind one day
tally of the jobless was again brought forth by its advo-
cates. There was also the proposal that the regular census
of 1940 be moved forward to 1938, so that the figures
would give a clear picture of the economic background.
Although the Departments of Labor and Commerce are on
record in favor of an enumeration of the unemployed, their
experts are not agreed on methods or definitions. The Presi-
dent has indicated that so far as the relief budget is con-
cerned, federal, state and local relief lists, plus the figures
of the U.S. Employment Service, provide a sufficient basis
for federal relief policy. The census schedule of 1930 was
inadequate; but as yet no satisfactory definition has been
produced that will show not only how many persons are
unemployed, but the nature of their unemployment. Dis-
regarding objections from many quarters a Senate subcom-
mittee is holding hearings on a bill providing for a census
of unemployed persons in the United States over eighteen
and under sixty-five, classified by "race, sex, customary
occupation and the cause and duration of their unemploy-
ment." The bill proposes a census this year, in 1940, and
every two years thereafter, with a federal commission to
fix weekly working hours based upon the findings.
The Labor Front
MACHINERY for the peaceful settlement of indus-
trial disputes is in operation all up and down the
labor front. Serious trouble on eastern railroads, the first
threatened since 1926, has been halted by a sixty-day truce
called by President Roosevelt under the Railway Labor
Act. At the request of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks,
the President appointed an emergency board to investigate
the difficulty between the brotherhood and eleven major
railroads in New York and vicinity. Under the act, the
board has thirty days to study the situation, and an addi-
tional thirty days must elapse after it reports before strike
action can be taken. The board is called on to consider the
demands of the brotherhood affecting wages and working
conditions, and also the jurisdictional dispute between the
brotherhood and the Longshoremen's Association. . . .
The agreement signed by General Motors of Canada,
Ltd., and representatives of employes who went on strike
April 8, granted the principle of seniority but did not in-
clude formal recognition of the United Automobile Work-
ers of America. Notice of termination may be exercised June
11, the date that also governs the agreement in the United
States between General Motors and the union. . . .
The first labor dispute in which the National Labor Rela-
tions Act was invoked after the decisions of the U. S.
Supreme Court upholding the measure, was that at the
Hershey Chocolate Corporation, Hershey, Pa. As part of
the agreement ending a strike of the chocolate workers, the
director of the Regional Labor Board conducted an election
in the plant to determine the employe agency for collective
bargaining. By a vote of 1542 to 781, a two-to-one ma-
jority, the employes rejected the "outside union" affiliated
with the Committee on Industrial Organization. . . .
Complaints of discrimination have been made by former
Ford Motor Company workers to the United Automobile
Workers of America and sent to the Regional Labor Board
in Detroit. If the complaints are verified, the board, under
the Wagner Act, will be required to draw up formal
charges and order hearings. This is the first brush between
the Ford Motor Company and the National Labor Rela-
tions Act.
Peace Day
MORE than a million students on 700 campuses took
part in the anti-war demonstration the last week in
April, according to the estimates of the United Student
Peace Committee. The committee, which engineered this
year's protest against war, represented thirteen national or-
ganizations, including the National Intercollegiate Chris-
tian Council, the National Council of Methodist Youth,
American Student Union, Foreign Policy Association. A
highlight of the demonstration was an official proclama-
tion by Governor Elmer A. Benson of Minnesota, setting
aside April 22 as "Peace Day," and urging the public to
"join this enlightened movement of our young people, and
direct their thoughts and energies to an analysis of the
causes of warfare, its futility, and the means of its pre-
vention."
Simultaneous mass meetings, indoors and out, were held
at eleven o'clock in the morning. Most of the participants
were "on strike," though some institutions, like New York
University, suspended all classes usually meeting at that
time. Highschools were not included in the "strike call."
In many communities, highschool students attended special
peace assemblies, arranged with faculty cooperation. Only
in a few scattered instances did the demonstrations become
disorderly. For the most part, the press reported them as
serious, sincere expressions of youth's belief in peace, youth's
abhorrence of the waste and futility of war.
The Senate Must Act
THE savage torture to death of two Negroes by a mob
at Duck Hill, Miss., last month shook the federal anti-
lynching bill out of congressional dalliance. In spite of
efforts to sidetrack the issue the House, after a sharp debate
marked by sectional rather than partisan division, passed the
Gavagan bill by the definitive vote of 277 to 119. The
provisions of this bill are substantially those of the Costigan-
Wagner bill which died in the previous Congress. [See The
Survey, March 1935, page 78.] It provides for access to the
federal courts where the constitutional right of equal pro-
tection is not enforced by the state, for federal fines or
imprisonment of peace officers whose failure to protect pri-
soners leads to their injury or death, and for the institution
of personal damage suits by victims or their kin against
counties in which occurs injury or death of prisoners by
mob violence. Repeated efforts to amend the bill by such
red herrings as the inclusion of sit-down strikes in the defini-
tion of crimes to which it applies, were sharply voted down.
The bill is in the Senate under the sponsorship of Senators
Wagner of New York and Van Nuys of Indiana. Its path
152
THE SURVEY
there promises to be rough but by no means hopeless. It
runs the successive chances of being buried in committee, of
being kept off the calendar and of being talked to death by
a filibuster. Active and unremitting pressure at every stage
is necessary if the bill is to survive the forces opposed to it.
Angelo Herndon Free
A \GELO HERNDON, sentenced to twenty years on a
Georgia chain gang because he attempted to organize
the unemployed in Atlanta, was last month set free by the
United States Supreme Court. The young Negro com-
munist was arrested, tried and convicted in 1932 under a
Civil War statute barring "any attempt to persuade or
otherwise induce others to join in any combined resistance
to the lawful authority of the state."
In a five-to-four decision the Supreme Court held that
there was no proof that the appellant had "incited to vio-
lence," and that without such evidence, the law unreason-
ably limited freedom of speech and assembly. Further, the
majority of the court found that "as construed and applied"
in this case, the statute "does not furnish a sufficiently as-
certainable standard of guilt." While the decision does not
specifically declare the Georgia measure invalid, it holds
that "so vague and indeterminate are the boundaries thus
set to the freedom of speech and assembly that the law
necessarily violates the guarantees of liberty embodied in
the Fourteenth Amendment."
Interested legal experts see in this ruling reason to believe
that the court would overthrow other convictions in parallel
cases. At present twenty-three Georgians are under indict-
ment for violations of the same statute, their trials post-
poned from time to time, pending the Herndon decision.
Mr. Herndon, who has been free on bail since 1935, now
plans to "return to the South and carry on my efforts to
improve the lot of the sharecropper, Negro and white."
Back on the Books
A LAW protecting the wage standards of New York
State's wage-earning women and minors was again
put on the statute books when on April 27 Governor
Lehman signed the Fischel bill. The measure was passed
by the legislature with little opposition. It was drawn along
the lines of the Wald law, declared invalid by the U.S.
Supreme Court a year ago, and the Washington State law,
recently upheld by the same court. [See The Survey, April
1937, page 110.]
The new law states: "It is the declared public policy of
the State of New York that women and minors employed
in any occupation should receive wages sufficient to provide
adequate maintenance and to protect their health."
The first step toward the enforcement of the Fischel law
was taken when officials of the State Department of Labor
unanimously approved a fact-finding investigation to estab-
lish minimum costs of "adequate maintenance and protec-
tion of health." The inquiry, recommended by Frieda S.
Miller, director of the division of minimum wage, will have
two aims : to construct a budget representative of the kinds
and quantities of commodities and services required for
"adequate maintenance in a modern community" ; and to
price the budget items in the communities to be covered.
The investigation will be pushed with all possible speed,
since the Department of Labor must have available cur-
rently, for the use of all wage boards, adequate, up-to-date
and accurately established information as to what consti-
EDWARD T. DEVINE AT SEVENTY
THE SURVEY'S first editor, and president of the National Con-
ference of Social Work in 1903. Mr. Devine was president in
absentia for he was in San Francisco, as chief of relief opera-
tions following the earthquake and fire, breaking ground for the
Red Cross for the subsequent development of its national program
of disaster and civilian relief.
tutes adequate maintenance and protection of health in New
York State. Among the sources to be drawn on in construc-
ting the minimum budget are schedules already worked out
by other agencies, scientific evidence in regard to "basic
human needs and the means of meeting them," and studies
of actual purchases made by families and individuals.
And So On. . .
BAD news on the child labor front. The federal amend-
ment was rejected in Missouri and Maryland and
its prospect in the five legislatures that can act this spring
is not "hopeful." • • Those interested in renewed federal
attention to the transient are urged to address their Sen-
ators with requests for the just-published preliminary re-
port on migratory labor, growing out of S.R. 298. [See
The Survey, July 1936, page 207.] A new resolution
(S.J. Res. 85) to allow $20,000 for completion of the
study, seems to have a good chance of passage. • • The
Quakers are back at their old job of feeding refugees behind
the battle lines. The first unit of the non-partisan Spanish
Child Feeding Mission sailed May 4. The project has the
cooperation of other religious, peace and social organiza-
tions. • • Southside, Virginia, Inc., headquarters at Law-
renceville, Va., has set its face against industries running
away from other communities in order to exploit "cheap
southern labor." This Chamber of Commerce refuses to
help such enterprises secure free sites, remission of taxes,
or other inducements, and urges southern organizations to
join in discouraging "the immigration of these sweatshops."
MAY 1937
153
Back to Indianapolis
National Conference Brings 1937 Social Workers to an Old Stamping Ground
By RUSSELL H. KURTZ
Editor, Social It'ork Year B'.ok
ON a spring day twenty-one years ago, as the Na-
tional Conference of Charities and Correction was
assembling in Indianapolis for its forty-third an-
nual meeting, Ringling Brothers' circus arrived on the
scene. The Survey of May 27, 1916, in reporting the out-
c*>me of that conflict in dates, gave the conference the best
of it: "The exhibitors of the biggest two-horned rhinoceros
in captivity and other monsters of the animal kingdom were
able," it said, "to hold the attention of the city for half a
day. But the National Conference was a seven-day wonder,
with unabated interest from beginning to end, not only of
the delegates but of the people of the city."
When the conference, now the National Conference of
Social Work, visits Indianapolis again this year it will offer
— without circus competition this time, it is hoped — an
even more exciting bill of attractions than that which
aroused such interest back in 1916. The "charities and cor-
rection" trappings are gone, it is true, but new panoplies of
security and social work have taken their place. [See fron-
tispiece.] The stage is larger, the acts more daring. As a
seven-day wonder, the conference will still be found to
have no equal.
At that earlier meeting they discussed relief, public-
health, child welfare, and many other of the subjects ap-
pearing on the 1937 program. Some of their emphases may
seem a bit odd to us now; "the municipalization of chari-
table work" for example, and "charities endorsement by
chambers of commerce." Good old fashioned words and
phrases, such as "What we do when the breadwinner is
intemperate" adorned the program. One entire section was
devoted to "inebriety" and its consequences. (Less than
three years later we had national prohibition.)
Certain hardy perennials in today's garden of unsolved
social problems were thriving even then. Employment sta-
bilization was seen by the conferees to be essential to unem-
ployment control ; and planned public works, to be put into
operation as the need arose, were advocated. Everyone
agreed that an effective national employment service should
be set up at once.
The late Dr. I. M. Rubinow, speaking for health insur-
ance, said (and remember this was twenty-one years ago) :
"I confess that after talking nothing but social insurance
for some ten or fifteen years and little but health insurance
for the last two or three years, I cannot help getting wear-
ied occasionally." He kept at it, however, for twenty years
longer and although he did not win out on health insur-
ance, he had the satisfaction of seeing unemployment and
other forms of social insurance he had fought for widely
accepted before his death last year.
With the World War nearly two years old in 1916, war
relief was a highlight of interest. A year later we were
drawn into the conflict ourselves.
Public assistance was still "outdoor relief" and as such
was discounted by certain charity organizationists of that
day. The tide of sentiment was beginning to turn, however,
154
as a result of the pioneer efforts of Gertrude Vaile and oth-
ers,' toward "socializing" this traditional competitor to pri-
vate charity.
Case records were discussed at the 1916 meeting, but
not the practice of case work ; delinquency, but not beha-
vior in its other aspects. The group worker had not yet
begun to identify himself as a technician in a special field.
Social action was a reality but was not talked about as a
specific function of professional social work. In fact, pro-
fessionalism was hardly a point of focus at all, emphasis
being largely divided between social problems and the agen-
cies created for dealing with them.
A few financial federations had come into existence by
1916 but the community chest development was still a
thing of the future. Community organization, through coun-
cils, had sunk a few tentative roots into the individu-
alistic soil of that era, with emphasis on the promotion of
new social programs. Interpretation was admitted to be
an art of which social workers knew very little. One speak-
er warned, "The truth is, though our purposes in promoting
community programs have been social, communal, collective
and public, our methods have been bureaucratic, aristocra-
tic, autocratic and oligarchic. We have not felt it necessary
lo secure general community support."
There was no "youth problem" in 1916 and no CCC ;
no Social Security Act nor WPA. Only the slenderest be-
ginnings of federal participation in welfare planning were
to be found, as represented in the activities of the then-
young Children's Bureau. The various states limited their
responsibilities to the institutional care of delinquents and
defectives. It was a day of local social service, with private
agencies carrying a large share of the burden and destined
to shoulder a great deal more before they were relieved of
a part of it by a later public welfare development.
Social work has been through a war, a boom and a major
depression since Indianapolis last entertained the confer-
ence. Its practitioners have been drafted into new types
of service, chiefly governmental and frequently in areas
more economic than social. It has grown in all directions
at once — outwardly, toward fuller participation in the life
of the community and nation, and inwardly, toward greater
skill in the performance of its daily tasks. Its relation-
ships with other disciplines have been clarified to some de-
gree, although each step in that direction has uncovered
new areas for exploration. Its literature has expanded rap-
idly and its vocabulary has become more exact. As a pro-
fession, social work has been growing up during these
crowded years.
A glance at the 1937 conference program reveals the
extent of this change. Here we find plans for a discussion
of "cultural restraints" on the lives of individuals; the
"interplay of case work and group work" in releasing hu-
man personality; the significance of "mass organization"
in relation to social legislation — to mention just a few.
"Charities" and "correction" seem to be out for keeps.
THE SURVEY
-
The Social Front
The Insurances
HPHE tattooing industry has been
given a new lease on life by the social
security program. Chicago tattoo artists
report, according to The New York
Times, that persons from all walks of
life are resorting to this means of keep-
ing their old age benefit account num-
bers with them. The favorite design is
"a fancy spread-eagle, tossing a social
security number from its beak."
New Laws — By April 1, every state
in the union had either passed an unem-
ployment compensation law, or taken
steps in that direction. Seven new state
laws have been approved since the middle
of March — those of Wyoming, Georgia,
Montana, Kansas, Nevada, Washington
and North Dakota. This brings the
total of states with approved laws to
forty-four, covering approximately 18,-
520,000 workers. In Alaska a bill has
passed both houses of the legislature and
at this writing is before the governor for
signature. Of the remaining states, four
— Delaware, Illinois, Missouri and Ne-
braska— now have bills in their legisla-
tures, and in Florida, where the legisla-
ture convened April 6, the subject has
been given intensive study.
Greater liberality for the workers cov-
ered and a tendency toward simplified
administrative procedure characterize
the more recent unemployment compen-
sation laws. All those approved since
March 15 provide for a pooled state fund
and require contributions only from em-
ployers. All will begin to pay benefits in
1939.
Wyoming's law provides for compen-
sation of 60 percent of full time wages
up to a maximum of $18, with a mini-
mum of $7, or three fourths of the week-
ly wage; payments may last as long as
fourteen weeks during the year. This
is the highest maximum payment set by
any state, and the benefit rate is exceeded
only by the District of Columbia, which
provides a sliding scale rate up to 65 per
cent, according to the number of the
insured's dependents. Montana, Georgia,
Kansas and North Dakota allow sixteen
weeks of benefits in one year; Nevada,
eighteen weeks.
Administration— Safeguards against
patronage appointments to jobs in state
departments newly created to administer
the social security programs are being
set up in a number of the thirty-seven
states which have not yet established gen-
eral merit system provisions, according
to the Civil Service Assembly of the
MAY 1937
United States and Canada. In Michi-
gan, where a general state civil service
bill is pending in the legislature, a merit
system provision for employes of the un-
employment compensation commission
was written into the act that passed the
special session of the legislature. Idaho
has set up a merit system in the unem-
ployment compensation division of the
state industrial accident board. Missis-
sippi reports that the merit system will
be used in establishing the Mississippi
employment service, to be related to its
unemployment compensation program.
No form of civil service has ever before
been applied to any job under the juris-
diction of the state government.
According to an analysis made by the
American Public Welfare Association,
three types of provision incorporated in
a number of the more recent unemploy-
ment compensation measures tend to
simplify administration: the substitution
of "earnings" for "weeks of employ-
ment" in determining the duration of
benefits; substitution of a fixed percent-
age of "actual earnings" in the highest
of several base calendar quarters for a
product of "average hourly earnings"
and "normal full time weekly hours" in
the computation of the normal full time
weekly wage upon which benefits are
EDITH ABBOTT
President, the 1937 National Conference
of Social Work; dean, School of Social
Service Administration, University of
Chicago. This year's conference will be at
Indianapolis, May 23-29. [For details see
The Survey, April 15, page 118.]
based; introduction of a "benefit year"
and a "base period" broken up into cal-
endar quarters, which means in effect
that a worker's rights to benefits are
computed at the end of each calendar
quarter. The last provision eliminates
the necessity for computing a worker's
right to benefits every time he suffers a
period of unemployment.
Glenn A. Bowers, executive director
of the division of placement and unem-
ployment insurance in New York, has
issued two new instructions to employ-
ers, effective May 15, simplifying and
standardizing record keeping and report-
ing procedures. The new instructions
are based on recent amendments to the
state law.
Proposed Changes— Amendments to
Title IX of the federal Social Security
Act to extend its coverage and to limit
the tax base were recommended in early
April by the New York Unemployment
Insurance Advisory Council. The coun-
cil urged that the coverage be extended
from employers of eight or more to em-
ployers of four or more; and that the
federal tax for unemployment compensa-
tion be limited to the first $3000 of an-
nual earnings of each covered employe,
instead of being based upon the entire
earnings of each, as at present.
The House in mid-April adopted an
amendment to the Independent Offices
appropriations bill by which all Social
Security Board attorneys and experts
would be placed under civil service by
means of a non-competitive test. This
was a substitute for the Senate rider,
putting all experts receiving over $5000
under Presidential nomination and Sena-
torial confirmation.
Constitutionality — Three cases in-
volving the constitutionality of unemploy-
ment compensation were argued last
month before the U. S. Supreme Court.
They are tests of the Alabama law, simi-
lar to the New York measure which
was upheld by a four-to-four decision
in November 1936. No opinion was
written in the New York case. The
most important of the pending measures
is that of the Steward Machine Com-
pany, involving the validity of Title IX
of the federal act, as well as the Alabama
measure. The suit, for a refund of $46
in taxes paid under the federal act, was
appealed by the collector of internal
revenue for Alabama. A decision is ex-
pected in early June.
The U.S. circuit court of appeals
at Boston on April 16 ruled the Social
Security Act unconstitutional, both in re-
gard to unemployment insurance and old
155
1927
1937
1927 — white: pension paying states; horizontal stripes: pension laws enacted; black:
no laws.
1937 — white: pension , and unemployment compensation laws; horizontal stripes: pensions
only; vertical stripes: unemployment compensation only; black: neither.
WHEN last month the American Association for Social Security cele-
brated its tenth anniversary, it celebrated a decade which has changed
the map of the United States. In 1927, only four states had old age pension
laws; the country had not begun to think in terms of unemployment compensa-
tion, and the jobless had to depend on breadlines, "relief in kind," private
charity. In 1937 there are 47 state pension laws, geared into a federal act;
43 states and the District of Columbia have unemployment compensation laws.
A nation-wide old age insurance scheme will begin to pay annuities in 1942.
The association is now moving on to its next goal, health insurance.
age benefits. By a two-to-one decision,
the court condemned the taxes imposed
by the act as an invalid exercise of the
powers of Congress. The case, involv-
ing the Edison Electric of Boston and
the Boston and Maine Railroad, was
brought by George P. Davis, a minority
stockholder of both corporations. The
ruling reversed a decision made last De-
cember by Judge George C. Sweeney of
the U.S. district court.
Old Age Benefits— The old age bene-
fit program now has 26 million workers'
accounts. All estimates of coverage pre-
dicted that this figure would be reached
during the initial stages of the program.
Secretary of Labor Perkins points out
that, this prediction having been realized,
it can now be estimated that by 1942,
when monthly benefits become payable,
the number covered will probably have
increased to about 40 million. . . . The
board has opened 115 field offices in all
parts of the country, and more are being
added as needed. . . . Lump sum pay-
ments to those reaching the age of sixty-
five after January 1, 1937, are already
being made. In these early months they
range from a few dollars to just over
$100. . . . Each claimant for a lump
sum payment is required to fill out only
one form, containing not more than
twelve questions. For payments of $100
or less, not even a notary is required.
Record and Report— In a twenty-
five-page mimeographed pamphlet, the
business information division of the in-
formation service of the Social Security
Board offers an analysis of the Security
Act, its operation and administration. It
covers all titles of the act. ... A dis-
cussion of Reserves for National Old
Age Pensions by Reinhard A. Hohaus
has been reprinted from the transactions
of the Actuarial Society of America, and
may be obtained through the Social Se-
curity Bureau of the Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company, New York.
Relief
' I *OO high to satisfy some, too low
for others, President Roosevelt's
budget item of $1500 million for work
relief has brought at least one fact clear-
ly to light. Large sectors of the public
rapidly are becoming "unsold" on federal
relief spending. Its defenders are nar-
rowing down to state and local officials
guarding their treasuries; Workers' Al-
liance groups speaking for the ultimate
relief consumer; presumably Harry
Hopkins and, in comparison with the
more conservative elements of Congress,
the President — though as we go to press
he is reported to be leaning toward
compromise.
"Relief rolls down — relief costs up,
in fifth year of recovery drive," said
headlines in a late April issue of The
United States News. Our Biggest
Business — Relief, a recent Saturday Eve-
ning Post article, challenged taxpayers
as "stockholders in this business of re-
lief" to a critical examination of what
the authors call inefficiencies and extrav-
agances. The New York Times in a lead-
ing editorial echoed and emphasized the
article, concluding that "the whole ques-
tion of relief should be thoroughly re-
viewed by a nonpartisan commission of
the highest authority." A strong bloc in
Congress considers President Roosevelt's
budget item for work relief too large by
half a billion dollars. Senator Arthur H.
Vandenberg has questioned the Depart-
ment of Labor estimates of unemploy-
ment and believes they are about five
millions too high.
On the other hand stand the burdened
states and municipalities. After a nation-
al survey, the Associated Press reported
that state governors present an almost
solid front in opposing any reduction of
the federal relief program which would
throw an added burden on the states.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors re-
quested that President Roosevelt allow
$2200 million in his federal budget for
the next fiscal year, to provide for 2,-
800,000 families on work relief, rather
that the $1500 million for 1,800,000
families which he has proposed. "The
cities believe that existing circum-
stances require continuance of federal
responsibility for the employable relief
group," said the mayors' statement.
"There is no further justification- for
states and local governments to borrow
for unemployment relief," said Carl H.
Chatters, executive of the Municipal
Finance Officers' Association in a recent
statement emphasizing the need to meet
such charges from current revenues.
Certain indications emerge which are
of major importance to the estimated
11,500,000 individuals now provided for
by the various federal, state and local
relief programs. WPA continues, though
pared down to a degree as yet unknown.
Reorganizations of state departments of
welfare and similar replanning of some
local relief set-ups, along with growing
demands for a federal unemployment
census and an overall study of relief,
promise more permanent provisions for
relief all along the line, but at an abso-
lute minimum.
Meanwhile, direct relief caseloads as
reported by states and localities show a
marked downward trend, at least part
of which is seasonal.
Signs of the Season — The spring leg-
islative sessions have enhanced relief
headaches all over the country. In Min-
nesota a "People's Lobby," apparently
encouraged by Governor Benson, brought
demands forcibly before members of
house and senate. Several hundreds of
them staged a "stay-in" at the Senate
Chamber.
The Ohio house and senate have been
at odds over relief appropriations. The
house is looking for new tax sources of
relief money while the senate is ready to
grant $7 million for 1937 and $8 million
for 1938, which the governor and house
say are nonexistent. Governor Davey has
156
THE SURVEY
been quoted as proposing to use National
Guard field kitchens to administer soup
to the hungry.
Relief and social workers were attacked
sharply in the lower house of the Mis-
souri general assembly: "Trained social
workers and relief workers have de-
scended upon the state as a plague of
locusts . . ." said the solons. Further ob-
jection was made to the extravagance of
granting federal surplus commodities in
such forms as pajamas and grapefruit to
Ozark Mountain farmers who, say the
legislators, cannot use such "luxuries."
Relief in New Jersey blows hot and
cold. The governor has transferred to
the state Financial Assistance Commis-
sion, disburser of relief funds, a $1,917,-
660 balance from the former ERA. He
opposed the diversion of an additional
$7,917,660 of highway funds toward 1937
relief costs, but the measure was passed
over his veto. Russell H. Dalrymple, for-
mer city hall chauffeur, was appointed
overseer of the poor of Trenton. Social
workers were relieved to find that the
overseer, who had been technically head
of the department, had become a subor-
dinate staff member, through recent re-
organization. When Gerald B. Bate,
qualified and experienced in social work
in the state, was proposed as director of
welfare for Plainfield, N. J., he was
opposed immediately by local political
groups as a non-resident of the town.
While challenges flew, Mr. Bate was
expected to take office. The Montclair
Association, in the April issue of Mont-
clair Matters, has prepared a brief and
objective interpretation of relief for com-
munity enlightenment. (Price 25 cents
from the association, Montclair, N. J.)
A decrease of 1 149 cases in Pennsyl-
vania's direct relief load, the first drop
since November 28, 1936, was reported
by the Pennsylvania State Emergency
Relief Board for the week ending April
3. During the same week, the largest
number of cases since December 12,
1936, were closed and the smallest num-
ber since November 14, 1936, opened.
Prognosis -A study of "prognosis" for
the entire case load of New Britain,
Conn.'s Department of Public Welfare,
recently was completed under the aus-
pices of the State Emergency Relief Com-
mission. Prognosis is taken to mean the
probable ability of relief clients to be-
come self-supporting so that, within a
year, they may be removed from relief
rolls "with reasonable expectancy of per-
manent independence thereafter." Each
case was classified as favorable or unfa-
vorable, by the department staff, on the
basis of an employability rating by the
local office of the U. S. Employment
Service.
That New Britain's relief problem is
principally one of maladjustment between
families' earning capacity and their re-
quirements for subsistence, rather than of
W!
unemployment is the first conclusion of
the study. The second is that little infor-
mation is available about the causes of
this maladjustment. Certain conditions,
such as poor health, may be recognized
as affecting the prognosis, yet, the report
points out, there is little knowledge about
the causes of these contributing factors.
Finis — Private agencies in Baltimore,
with officers of the Council of Social
Agencies as their spokesmen, told direct-
ors of the Emergency Charity Associa-
tion (the city's relief set-up) that they
can no longer assume the burden of sup-
plementing inadequate incomes in WPA
families. To do so would "wholly dis-
rupt the primary program of the private
agencies," they said, and defined their
aims as rehabilitation and adjustment of
families in which there are social prob-
lems. The private agencies said that they
would continue to help where they could.
Public Assistance
'ELL over seven hundred bills re-
lating to social security have been
introduced into state legislatures this
year, nearly six hundred of them dealing
with public assistance. At last reports the
twenty-fifth state (Alabama) had se-
cured the Social Security Board's approv-
al of all three forms of public assistance
and forty-three states were participating
in one or more plans. Of the ninety-nine
approved public assistance plans, in all
states, forty-two are for old age assist-
ance, twenty-nine for aid to the blind and
twenty-eight for dependent children. A
number of plans to integrate state wel-
fare and public assistance were passed at
this legislative session, or are pending.
The estimated total number of public
assistance recipients for April is approxi-
mately 90,600 larger than for February,
bringing the total to about 1,620,700 per-
sons. Over half of the increase was in
old age assistance. The overall total is
calculated to include 1,258,000 aged, 32,-
300 blind and 330,400 dependent children
in 128,400 homes. (Estimates for April
are based on the last thirteen months' re-
ports.)
As of April 1, the total federal con-
tribution to state public assistance for
the entire period since February 1936
had reached $142,984,369.48.
Children's Bureau — At its recent
twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, the
U.S. Children's Bureau, which adminis-
ters the social security programs for ma-
ternal and child health, announced recom-
mendations of the bureau's general ad-
visory committee on maternal and child
welfare to extend medical and nursing
care to all mothers and new-born infants
in need of such aid. "Need" is interpreted
to include both economic need and lack
or inadequacy of facilities.
Recommendations include a training
program for local doctors and nurses,
urban and rural; improvement of home
care; provision for adequate and acces-
sible hospital care; the whole to apply
especially to areas or groups where such
care is not available. The cooperation of
medical societies in working out the pro-
gram was considered an essential and
the right of the patient to select her own
physician would be preserved, according
to Dr. Kenneth D. Blackfan, chairman
of the advisory committee.
Local Policies — In Massachusetts, a
special bill has been passed to allow per-
sons receiving old age assistance to take
"vacations" from their home state for
not over thirty days without forfeiting
their right to assistance. In Nevada, if
the aged person goes from his own coun-
ty to another county in the state, for
more than thirty days, he must apply for
assistance in the new county of resi-
dence. . . . The attorney general of Mon-
tana has ruled that when property is
sold to the Resettlement Administration
by recipients of old age assistance the
state department of welfare is not en-
titled to recover money for public assist-
ance received. Possession of property
which did not produce enough income to
meet clients' needs did not render them
ineligible, it was stated.
Security in Action — Arizona has ex-
changed its Board of Public Welfare for
a new one called the Board of Social
Security and Public Welfare, which in-
cludes welfare and social security activ-
ities. . . . During March, 35,593 aged
persons in Chicago received public assist-
ance, averaging $20.83 per person. Jo-
seph L. Moss, director of the Bureau
of Public Welfare, estimates that the
number of recipients will grow to about
45,000. . . . The California Chamber of
Commerce, concerned because the state's
average old age assistance payment is
$31.56 while the national average' is
$18.81, is opposing proposals brought be-
fore the legislature to raise the level of
assistance. It is feared that the needy
aged will flock in from other states.
In "Homes" — A knotty problem in
many parts of the country has been
whether or not needy old folk, living in
public or private institutions, are eligible
for old age assistance under social se-
curity provisions. The Social Security
Board has explained that federal funds
may not be applied for payments to in-
mates of public institutions, though a
state may, of course, use its own funds
for this purpose. As no mention is made
in the Social Security Act of persons
living in private or fraternal homes, de-
cisions are left to individual states re-
garding a policy for this class of appli-
cant. At least nineteen states have specif-
MAY 1937
157
ically excluded such applicants. In states
which allow payments to aged in private
institutions, federal funds may be used
only if they are paid directly to the bene-
ficiary and not to the institution.
Youth and Education
A MERICAN educators are concerned
•^* with the plight of the "Thomasites,"
the remnants of the little army of 600
teachers, 170 of them women, who went
out to the Philippines on the transport,
Thomas, in 1901. Their mission was to
substitute the schoolhouse for the rifle in
pacifying and enlightening some ten mil-
lion heterogeneous, backward people. In
spite of cholera, plague, bandits, ty-
phoons, School and Society reports, they
succeeded in seven years in organizing a
complete school system with hundreds of
primary and intermediate schools, high-
schools in every province, a national uni-
versity. Today there are 27,000 trained
native teachers in the islands, 1,200,000
students. The pioneers not only launched
this educational program, they devised
quick, ingenious ways to teach English
as a lingua franca in a country that was
a babel of forty-seven different dialects.
They trained teachers. They developed
textbooks based on the natural life of the
islands, and the occupations, traditions
and current history of the people. Dur-
ing their thirty-five years of service they
have contributed 3 percent of their
salaries, ranging from $900 to $1500, to
the pension fund of the Philippine Bu-
reau of Education. The First Common-
wealth Assembly, faced with budget
trouble, has liquidated this fund, sweep-
ing away the old age security of the hun-
dred remaining "Thomasites."
CGG — President Roosevelt has asked
Congress to enact legislation, making the
Civilian Conservation Corps a perma-
nent agency, and fixing the maximum en-
rollment at 300,000 young men and war
veterans, 10,000 Indians and 5000
youths in territorial and insular posses-
sions. At this writing, the measure is
still in committee. . . . The CCC states
that approximately 10,000 men are leav-
ing the camps each month to accept pri-
vate employment. Three large industrial
concerns, one each in New York, Illinois
and Washington, are quoted as stating
that they prefer to employ CCC en-
rollees "because of their practical train-
ing, ability to follow instructions, and
willingness to work." ... A major proj-
ect of the American Youth Commission,
744 Jackson Place, Washington, D. C.,
is a study of CCC. It will seek to reveal
the traits of the youths who enroll in the
corps, and critically evaluate the social
and educational aspects of their camp
life. Ten thousand of the 100,000 new
enrollees entering in April are being
chosen as a representative cross-section.
They will be given a battery of tests, and
will be interviewed on entering and again
six months and a year later. Special
emphasis will be placed on observing the
health, education and recreation pro-
grams of the camps, and the social atti-
tudes developed. A follow-up study
will be made on how enrollees adjust
themselves when they return to their
own communities. Comparisons will be
made with other groups with similar
socio-economic background.
"All the Children"— More play-
grounds, clinics, libraries are the chief
needs of New York school children, ac-
cording to the annual report of Harold
G. Campbell, superintendent of schools.
The large report, written, illustrated
and bound like a fine book, is an impres-
sive account of what the schools of one
city offer "all the children." Highlights
are the fact that 60 percent of all boys
and girls of highschool age are in high-
school; the increased school population
due to the higher school-leaving-age ; the
development in an overcrowded public
school setting of arts, crafts, vocational
guidance and training, health and social
services tending to individualize the
school program to the needs and abilities
of the pupils.
Better Readers — Improved proced-
ures and materials for slow readers, and
a WPA remedial reading project cut the
proportion of pupils deficient in reading
ability from 51 percent to 38.7 percegt
in one year, according to a standard test
readministered to 12,543 pupils in New
York City public schools. The revised
methods were devised after a similar test
showed only 49 percent at or above the
national normal in their ability to read.
The original test revealed a close corre-
lation between reading ability and en-
vironmental factors. The successful
year's effort to overcome these factors,
so far as the schools can do so, was di-
rected by Associate Superintendent
Stephen F. Bayne and Assistant Super-
intendent Benjamin B. Greenburg.
Record and Report— How to Plan
Your Highschool Course, prepared by
the guidance department of the Samuel
J. Tilden Highschool, Tilden Ave. and
East 57 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. (price
25 cents) includes a section showing
young students the vocational relation-
ships of their school subjects. . . . Ad-
dressed not to publicity experts but to
laymen, the Service Bureau for Adult
Education offers a meaty pamphlet, Pub-
licity for Adult Education by Dorothy
Rowden, New York University, Wash-
ington Square, New York. (Price 35
cents) . . . Public Affairs Pamphlet, re-
vised to February 1937, is an index to
inexpensive material on social, economic,
political and international affairs. (Su-
perintendent of Documents, Washington,
D. C. Price 10 cents.) . . . The latest
pamphlets issued by the National Occu-
pational Conference, 551 Fifth Avenue,
New York, appraising and abstracting
available literature on various vocations,
deal with Dietetics, Painting, Police Of-
ficer, Letter Carrier, Landscape Archi-
tecture. (Price 10 cents each.)
Nurses and Nursing
XTURSING projects of the Works
Progress Administration during the
last fiscal year gave employment to six
thousand graduate nurses. Their service
was mostly bedside care, on a visit basis,
to families on relief or unable to pay for
care. Since the beginning of the current
fiscal year (July 1, 1936) seventy-five
WPA projects for graduate nurses in six-
teen states have been approved and more
are pending. [See The Survey, December
1936, page 374.] Projects submitted by
local administrators usually follow recom-
mendations of a state department of
health and must be approved by the U. S.
Public Health Service.
The WPA has insisted on certain stan-
dard working procedures on all projects
and has been careful to interpret "nurse"
as meaning registered graduate nurse.
Projects which would assign non-profes-
sional persons to nursing duties have been
consistently rejected.
In appraising the WPA nursing pro-
gram, Public Health Nursing points out
that in addition to giving employment and
providing much needed assistance to
health departments and hospitals, the pro-
jects have "introduced many recent grad-
uates of accredited schools of aursing to
the field of public health and aroused
their interest in this phase of nursing."
Many have elected later to take special
public health training. Funds now avail-
able will carry WPA nursing projects
until June 1, 1937.
Long and Useful— Boston's Commun-
ity Health Association began in 1886
with one nurse and was called the In1
structive District Nursing Association.
Today it is described, in an anniversary
booklet, as "the hospital without walls."
In 1935, over 150 nurses of the associa-
tion's staff visited more than a thousand
persons each day, more than half being
free visits to indigent families.
"Foreign Parts"— I nstruction in
"mothercraft" and child welfare work
are features of the extension program of
"Bush Nursing" according to the annual
report of the Department of Health of
Tasmania, Australia. A Memorial Fund
raised last year during Great Britain's
Jubilee Celebration was used to further
interest in Tasmanian maternity and
158
child welfare work through the health de
partment's nursing centers. . . . Young
nurses in training in the Moscow Air
Ambulance Squadron of the Red Cross
and Red Crescent Alliance may take
special courses as nurse-parachutists, giv-
en by the alliance. They are trained to
jump carrying supplies and medicaments
and to be ready for service wherever their
jumps may take them. . . . The first two
public health nurses sent out by the Red
Cross to Matanuska colony in Alaska
have not held their jobs long. Reason:
marriage to young colony officials.
Big Figures — The nurses of the New
York City Department of Health during
1936 made more than 575,000 visits to
homes for health instruction and protec-
tion against communicable diseases.
Another part of their collective job was
service at clinics, which cared for more
than a million and a half patients during
the year. The nurses conducted four
thousand health classes attended by some
40,000 parents; made 75,000 inspections
in schools and held 275,000 conferences
ivith parents over child health problems.
Dulcet Tones — Courses in voice train-
ing and discipline are being given to stu-
dent nurses at the Russell Sage School of
Nursing throughout their four years of
training. A record is made of each stu-
dent's voice, "before and after" and as
the training progresses, to insure im-
provement of its tonal quality and the
later comfort of patients.
County Nurses — New Mexico now
has at least one public health nurse in
every county. The total number em-
ployed in the state increased by 57 per-
cent in 1935-36. In all but two counties
the cost is now met through local county
budgets. Because of already established
plans and standards, social security funds
were readily available for help to the
state's public health nursing program. . . .
At the beginning of 1936, forty-four Illi-
nois counties had no public health nurses.
A few were added during the year, but
thirty or forty counties still are without
any public health nursing service. The
State Department of Health estimates
that with "a nurse for every county," and
an annual investment of $80,000 in a
state-wide county nursing service, at least
8000 cases of communicable disease and
300 deaths could be avoided annually. The
department points out, that "there is now
an opportunity" for financial aid to needy
counties and communities in financing the
employment of qualified nurses.
Public Health
*T* HE Chamber of Commerce of the
• United States has announced that
Milwaukee won the 1936 Health Conser-
vation contest for cities of over 500,000
population. Winners in other classes in
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
If You Have "ACID INDIGESTION"
Alkalize Your Stomach This Way in Feu~ Minutes
V^OU can relieve even the
most annoying symptoms of
acid stomach in almost as little
time, now, as it takes to tell.
The answer is quick and sim-
ple: You alkalize your stomach
almost instantly this way:
Take — two teaspoonfuls of Phil-
lips' Milk of Magnesia 30 min-
utes after meals. Or, take two
Phillips' Milk of Magnesia Tab-
lets, each of which contains the
equivalent of a teaspoonful of
the liquid form.
Try this method. Get a bottle
of the liquid Phillips' for home
use. A box of the Phillips' tab-
lets that you can carry with
you in pocket or purse —
only 25<* for a big box.
Watch out that any you
accept is clearly labeled
"Phillips' Milk of Magnesia.
MILK OF MAGNESIA
MERCUROCHROME, H.W. & D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodium)
After a thorough investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
(1935)
MERCUR ROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Request
HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC
Baltimore, Md.
the contest, which is conducted each
year in cooperation with the American
Public Health Association, were: Dallas,
Tex.; New Haven, Conn.; Pasadena,
Calif. ; Greenwich, Conn. ; and Middle-
town, N. Y. In the Rural Contest win-
ners have not been announced.
Advisers — Mayor La Guardia of
New York, president of the U.S. Con-
ference of Mayors, has appointed a na-
tional committee of physicians as an ad-
visory board to mayors wishing to estab-
lish municipal public health services.
Members are Dr. Joseph W. Mountains,
senior surgeon, U.S.P.H.S., chairman;
Dr. John L. Rice, New York City com-
missioner of health; Dr. Allen W. Free-
man, dean, School of Hygiene and Pub-
lic Health, Johns Hopkins University;
Dr. Wilson G. Smillie, professor of pub-
lic health administration, School of Pub-
lic Health, Harvard University; and
Dr. Huntington Williams, Baltimore
commissioner of health.
Too Costly?— The Allegheny Coun-
ty Emergency Child Health Committee
examined 7366 two-to-six-year-olds in
1934 and found that 6408 had physical
defects in need of correction. Recently,
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
159
volunteer workers undertook for the com-
mittee a two-year appraisal program, to
see whether the remedial defects had re-
ceived correction, and if not, why not.
They chose twelve districts as a cross sec-
tion. Half the unvaccinated children were
still unvaccinated. Half still have not
been immunized against diphtheria and 65
percent still had their defective tonsils.
Educational work with parents has been
done in the interim by many cooperating
social agencies.
In all cases the families belong to a
very low income group ; the problem was
largely financial. "We didn't have the
money and there wasn't room in the free
clinics." "Yes, we know — but maybe she'll
outgrow it." "Well, so what? We're
licked anyhow?"
In Transit — Eight passenger vessels,
approaching the Port of New York in
early February passed "Quarantine"
without stopping for inspection. These
were the first vessels to enter an Ameri-
can port by radio clearance, under a new
plan known as "Radio Pratique." Permis-
sion to omit the stop at Quarantine is
issued by radio to a carefully selected
class of vessels known for their sound
health standards.
According to Colonel Dr. Porru of
the Institute Medico-Leg ale Aeronautico
of Florence, Italy, health measures such
as examining travellers on arrival and de-
parture should be adopted in airports and
aboard airplanes to prevent the spread of
infection. This is already provided for
in Italy, where physicians are on duty
at airports at all times. The Air In-
ternational Committee of Sanitation was
established in 1933. Dr. Trolli of the Bel-
gian Corps has found that insects which
transmit yellow fever may enter airplanes
during their stay in airports and be car-
ried 2000 kilometers a day.
Inquiry — The National Committee on
Maternal Health plans an inquiry upon
the so-called "safe period" as a means of
contraception. The committee is seeking
the voluntary cooperation of a widely dis-
tributed group of young married couples,
preferably from scientific or professional
circles, who will cooperate in the study
by keeping accurate and complete records
over a period of years. Dr. Raymond
Squier, executive secretary, asks that in-
quiries be directed to the National Com-
mittee on Maternal Health, Inc., New
York Academy of Medicine Building, 2
East 103 Street, New York.
Word to the Wise — Pale chopped
meat is to be preferred to a temptingly
red bargain, says Westchester's Health.
The most colorful meat may contain a
liberal quantity of a chemical product
otherwise legitimately used as a dish
cleaning compound.
News Briefs — Dr. Carl C. Taylor of
the Bureau of Agricultural Economics
reports that one fourth of the nation's
population lives in thirteen southern states
and that this group "annually contributes
one third of the children born in the
nation." There has been a marked rural-
to-urban shift in recent years with a con-
stant migration of young adults to other
sections of the country.
More than two thirds of the total ap-
propriation of the Commonwealth Fund
in 1936 was devoted to health. Grants
were made for public health service to
THE PAMPHLET SHELF
Health
TUBERCULOSIS EDUCATION, by Elma
Rood. The Rural School Press. Madison Col-
lege, Tenn.
Methods of educating young and old on
what tuberculosis is, its effects and how
to prevent it.
STUDY OF TRANSIENTS APPLYING
FOR MEDICAL CARE AT FREE AND
PART-PAY CLINICS IN LOS AN-
GELES, by the clinic and hospital section,
health division, Los Angeles Council of
Social Agencies. Price 10 cents from the
council, 1151 South Broadway, Los
Angeles.
PROCEDURES IN PREVENTIVE MED-
ICINE. Supplement to The Journal of
the Medical Society of New Jersey, March
1937. Editorial offices, 137 East State
Street, Trenton, N. J.
Designed for the family doctor's guid-
ance in problems which touch social work
as well as medicine, this is a symposium
from "top-notchers" in both fields.
Public Welfare
A SURVEY OF THE CURRENT RELIEF
SITUATION IN TWENTY-EIGHT SE-
LECTED AREAS OF THE UNITED
STATES. The American Association of So-
cial Workers, 130 East 22 Street, New York.
An authoritative statement on the state
of relief in this country, in relation to its
adequacy and organization.
LEGISLATIVE REPORTING SERVICE,
issued semi-monthly by the American Public
Welfare Association, 850 East 58 Street,
Chicago. Subscription $8 a year. Sent to
agency members of the association without
charge, on request.
"This service is designed to report on
the action and disposition of bills intro-
duced into the several state legislatures."
It will relate to all welfare provisions
made by the states.
RELIEF IN THE RURAL SOUTH, by How-
ard B. Myers. Reprinted from the Southern
Economic Journal, January 1937.
A dissection down to fundamentals ol
relief in selected rural areas of the South.
Professional
PROBLEMS OF ADMINISTRATION IN
SOCIAL WORK, by Pierce Atwater. 231
pages, mimeographed. McClain and Hed-
man Company, St. Paul, Minn. Available
in limited quantity from the publishers.
Price $3.50.
New material, primarily designed for
teaching, in the specific field of admin-
istering social agency programs.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS
OF SOCIAL AGENCIES. Price 25 cents
a copy; ten or more, 20 cents a copy; 100
or more, 15 cents a copy.
STATISTICAL AIDS FOR COMMUNITY
PLANNING. Price 50 cents a copy; ten
copies or more, 35 cents; 100 or more, 30
cents.
Both issued by Community Chests and
Councils, Inc., 155 East 44 Street, New
York.
The first answers sixty-nine questions
most frequently asked of the national of-
fice. A compilation of standards showing
how the adequacy of social agency pro-
grams can be measured comprises the sec-
ond pamphlet. Material was gathered from
national social agencies.
Child Welfare
CHILD WELFARE COUNCILS (DENMARK,
NORWAY, SWEDEN) A League of Nations
publication. Geneva. 1937, Series IV, I.
From the League of Nations Publications
Service, Columbia University Press, New
York.
Reports an exhaustive study of the legal
bases, operation, results and other aspects
of child welfare in the three Scandinavian
countries.
PAMPHLET ON POLICIES AND PRAC-
TICES IN CHILD CARE AGENCIES,
Welfare Council of New York. Available on
request from the council, 44 East 23 Street,
New York.
THE LICENSING OF BOARDING HOMES,
MATERNITY HOMES AND CHILD
WELFARE AGENCIES, by Gladys Fraser.
University of Chicago Press. Price 75 cents.
An analysis of state control in health and
welfare institutions for child care.
rural communities, rural hospitals, medi-
cal education and medical research. Fel-
lowships were given to British graduate
students at American universities.
The American Society for the Control
of Venereal Disease recently was or-
ganized in San Francisco. Dr. Ray Lyman
Wilbur, Dr. J. C. Geiger, city health
officer of San Francisco, and Dr. Russell
V. Lee, organizer of the new society,
spoke at the organization luncheon.
Professional
D ELIGIOUS, charitable and educa-
tional agencies of the country may —
or may not — profit largely from the dona-
tion of vast holdings of railroad stock by
George A. Ball, of Muncie, Ind., to es-
tablish the George and Francis Ball
Foundation, recently incorporated. The
gift, said to include 93 percent of the
common stock of the great Midamerica
Corporation, was estimated to have a
present market value of over $10 million.
The new foundation faces the possibility
of extended litigation, investigation by
the Senate Interstate Commerce Com-
mittee, and other related complications.
All elaboration of purposes of the foun-
dation has been withheld, pending de-
velopments, the latest of which is the
sale of its holdings for an undisclosed
price from which, according to Mr.
Ball, the foundation will realize "a large
amount of cash."
Pursuit of Knowledge — The Car-
negie Institute of Technology has an-
nounced a new two-year graduate curric-
ulum in the department of social work,
leading to the degree of Master of Sci-
ence in Social Work. The institute also
offers a preprofessional course, leading to
a B.S. degree in Social Science. Summer
courses will be given this year. Infor-
mation from the registrar, Carnegie In-
stitute of Technology, Schenley Park,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
The School of Social Work in the Uni-
versity of Southern California has an-
nounced second graduate year curricula
in family welfare, group work and social
work administration. A certificate will be
given in the field of specialization or.
with the addition of a thesis, the degree
of Master of Social Work. Information
from the registrar, University of South-
ern California, Los Angeles.
A new course on Social Aspects of
Prison Management, given by Sanford
Bates, now director of The Boys' Clubs
of Ajnerica, is on the "bill of fare" of the
New York School of Social Work during
the present session.
Thomas D. Eliot, now on sabbatical
leave from Northwestern University, and
Sigrid W. Eliot will lead a party of ten
American college students on a trip to
Sweden this summer as an "experiment in
160
international living." Three weeks will
be spent living in Swedish homes and
three camping in northern Sweden.
A tour of the Soviet Union for a group
interested in studying social and health
work this summer will be led by John A.
Kingsbury, under the auspices of The
Open Road, Inc. The party will sail
from New York July 10, returning Sep-
tember 11. Information from The Open
Road, 8 West 40 Street, New York.
A summer course in beginning bacter-
iology, designed for nurses, health educa-
tors, health inspectors and the like will
be given at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, June 14-July 23. Informa-
tion from Prof. B. E. Proctor, at the in-
stitute, Cambridge, Mass.
A summer program in public health
nursing, leading to a certificate in that
field, will be given by the School of Ap-
plied Sciences, graduate professional
school of Western Reserve University,
June 21-July 30. Information from the
director of summer session, School of
Education, at the university, Cleveland,
Ohio.
A training course in camp counselor-
ship and administration will be given July
1 -September 1 at Surprise Lake Camp,
Cold Spring, N. Y., a joint project of
the New York City YMHA and the Edu-
cational Alliance. Apply to the director of
training, at the camp, for information.
For a complete listing of summer
schools and institutes for public health
nurses, summer 1937, see Public Health
Nursing, April 1937, page 248. ... A
pamphlet giving full information on na-
tional training schools and summer
courses for girl scout leaders may be
obtained from national headquarters, the
Girl Scouts, now at 14 West 49 Street,
New York.
Current Surveys — Under the super-
vision of Community Chests and Coun-
cils, special surveys are now completed,
under way or in prospect: in Newburgh,
N. Y., by Paul Benjamin of Buffalo; in
Raleigh, N. C., by Thomas Devine of
Grand Rapids, Mich.; in Norfolk, Va.,
directed by Carter Taylor of Harris-
burg, Pa.; in Reading, Pa., with a prelim-
inary survey by C. C. Stillman of Co-
lumbus, Ohio; and in Allentown, Pa.,
with Robert O. Loosley of Erie, Pa., as
consultant.
State Conferences — The familiar
problem of limiting registration at insti-
tutes was tackled by the Minnesota State
Conference of Social Work this year with
a new plan. A general institute, with a
subject of broad social significance was
given — an hour and a half session — in
addition to a number of specialized insti-
tutes; attendance unlimited. Registration
for the general institute was 354; the
largest attendance for a special group,
109. The conference scheduled only five
general sessions, and one session for each
SOVIET UNION
Travel in the Soviet Union adds intellectual tonic to mere change of
scene. Here is a sixth of the world transformed in two decades into
a modern industrial nation, with agriculture all but completely
collectivized, and with its 175 millions enjoying the benefits of far-
reaching social improvements. The evidences of this progress -
gigantic works, huge mechanized farms, housing developments,
schools, clubs, theatres, scientific institutes — are seen against a back-
drop of scenic grandeur and well preserved monuments of the past.
Trips usually begin at Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, or Odessa. They
may include a cruise down the Volga, excursions in the mighty
Caucasus, and steamer voyages along the Black Sea Riviera to sunny
Crimea and colorful Ukraine.
CONSULT YOUR TRAVEL AGENT
Select from the many itineraries available at inclusive rates of
$15 per day first class, $8 tourist, $5 third . . . providing all
transportation on tour in the U.S.S.R., fine hotels, meals, sight-
seeing and guide-interpreter service. For map of the Soviet
Union and Booklet SM-5, write to
INTOURIST, INC.
545 Fifth Avenue, New York
360 N. Michigan Ave. 756 South Broadway
Chicago Los Angeles
of the conference divisions, thus achieving
a general simplification of program.
The Illinois State Conference this year
organized a Social Forces Committee.
Its members are delegates from forty
state-wide bodies, lay and professional.
Conference Secretary Olive H. Chandler
explains that a "sense of reliance upon
the conference as a source of material
and information" was built up in the affi-
liated agencies. Particular stress was laid
on possibilities of securing social action
through legislation.
News Notes — The American Public
Welfare Association and other agencies
at the well-known address, 850 East 58
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
161
Street, Chicago, are to be housed in a
fine new building, in keeping with Uni-
versity of Chicago architecture. . . . The
Joint Distribution Committee, formerly
at 7 Hanover Street, New York, is now
at 100 East 42 Street, Room 514. ... A
recent bibliography issued by the Russell
Sage Foundation Library covers stand-
ards in social work fields, 1926-36. Price
10 cents from the foundation, department
of publications, 130 East 22 Street, New
York. . . . The American Association of
Medical Social Workers has a new ad-
dress, 844 Rush Street, Chicago.
In Training — A plan of training for
public personnel administration which
has been in successful operation in Cali-
fornia for six years is described by Louis
J. Kroeger in a bulletin issued by the
Civil Service Assembly of the United
States and Canada, 850 East 58 Street,
Chicago, price 25 cents. The plan was
originated by the state division of per-
sonnel and organization (now the state
personnel board) in conjunction with the
University of California. The program,
conducted at the university, includes the
discussion of general principles and the
pursuit of individual studies with prog-
ress, findings and conclusions reported
back to the whole group. The present
bulletin includes summaries of three such
studies: the problem of physical stand-
ards, age limits in the public service, and
a survey of exemptions in civil service.
Meetings— The Boys' Clubs of Amer-
ica are holding their annual convention
May 10-13 in New York City. . . . The
New England Health Education Associ-
ation will meet June 4-5 at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology, Cam-
bridge, Mass. . . . The International
Congress of Nurses will meet in London,
July 19-24.
In Print — A new directory, Interna-
tional Organizations in the Field of Pub-
lic Administration, has been compiled
and issued by the joint committee on
planning and cooperation, composed of
representatives of the International In-
stitute of Administrative Sciences and the
International Union of Local Authorities.
(Price $1.50 from Public Administration
Service, 850 East 58 Street, Chicago.)
People and Things
' I A HE lost, strayed and "financially
dependent," the psychopaths and am-
nesia cases at the 1939 New York
World's Fair, will be among the charges
of Henrietta Additon, recently appointed
Director of Wel-
fare Activities for
the fair. A large
advisory welfare
committee in-
cludes social work-
er s , churchmen
and prominent
citizens. Mrs.
Sydney Borg of
New York, presi-
dent of the Jew-
ish Big Sisters
and active volunteer social worker is
chairman of the committee, which will
function in cooperation with the Welfare
Council of New York and the Brooklyn
Council of Social Agencies. As an-
nounced by Grover Whalen, president
of the fair corporation, anticipated wel-
fare problems include: first aid, care of
the sick, adequate police protection
KESSLERF.
against undesirable persons, and "similar
matters."
Miss Additon was director of the erst-
while New York City Crime Prevention
Bureau, has been connected with the
faculty of Bryn Mawr College in the
graduate department of social econom-
ics, and is well known for her work with
juvenile delinquents and in community
organization.
News Notes — An international sur-
vey of schools of social work, undertaken
by Alice Salomon at the request of the
Russell Sage Foundation, will result in a
book on education for social work. The
foundation bulletin predicts for it the sub-
title, "a sociological interpretation based
on an international survey of schools of
social work." It will be published in
Switzerland, but may be ordered through
the foundation. Price $3.
Janet Edith McCrindell, of Liverpool,
England, prominent in British govern-
ment social service as well as in social
settlements, is in this country en route to
the Orient. She is a guest of the National
Federation of Settlements while in the
United States and is visiting settlements
across the country.
Joel R. Moore, widely known as super-
visor of the U.S. Probation Service, re-
cently resigned to go to Jackson, Mich.,
as warden of the state penitentiary there.
Mr. Moore, who ranks with the pioneers
Tours
Travel
There is still time to send your application for the
R ON
SOCIAL WORK
IN THE
SOVIET UNION
y\fALTER WEST.
* Executive Secre-
tary of the American
Association of Social
Workers, directs the
2nd Annual Seminar
for Social Workers.
Members will come in
contact with Soviet
workers in the vari-
ous fields of social
welfare in Moscow,
Ukraine and Crimea.
47-day inclusive rate.
1489.
Sail July 3 — Return Aug. 18
For full information regarding this and
other Edu travel tours, or individual trarel
service, phone, call or write — and mention
"Survey Mid-Monthly."
EDUTRAVEL, INC.
An Institute for Educational Travel
55 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK, N. Y.
^_^^___ Til. Gramercy 7-3281-3285 ^__^_
A SUMMER HOLIDAY TO
GREECE ALBANIA ITALY
Vi itniK unusual placet In the Aegean Sea, Adriatic and the
Mediterranean.
ially conducted by Mr. Elliot Taylor of
Foundation.
the Near Ka-i
SPRING AND SUMMER VACATION TRIPS—
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California West Indies Great Lakes
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CRUISE TO LAKHAIMHl!
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vagabond ships.
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One East 57th Street, New York City PLaza 3-2396
Ti
RAMP TRIP
Specializing in
FREIGHTER VOYAGES and CARGO LINER CRUISES
Booklet (No. 2) of Voyages Up to 50 Days, on
request, 44 Beaver St., N. Y. C. BO. 9-8850.
A European Study Tour to Investigate
HOUSING AND CITY PLANNING
in England — Norway — Sweden — Holland — Belgium —
France.
Leaders — Dr. Carol Aronovici — Professor Dorothy Schaffter.
7 weeks — Sails on Queen Mary July 28.
POCONO STUBY TOURS
545 Fifth Avenue New York
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
162
in the young field of probation, spent his
early professional years in Michigan. . . .
Wayne L. Morse has succeeded Justin
Miller as administrative director of the
attorney general's Survey of Release
Procedures.
Read Bain, professor of sociology at
Miami University, has been appointed
lecturer in sociology at Harvard Univer-
sity for the academic year, 1937-8.
Wheel-horses — The new executive of
the Jewish Social Service Bureau of Pitts-
burgh is Gertrude A. Click, from the
Baltimore organization of the same name.
. . . Rhoda Kaufman, since 1931 executive
of the Atlanta Family Welfare Society,
is the new executive of the Atlanta Social
Welfare Council. Hugh N. Fuller is re-
search assistant. . . . H. A. Waldkoenig,
for years identified with the Pennsylvania
State Conference of Social Work as sec-
retary, now also is directing the Lan-
caster, Pa. Welfare Federation. . . .
The Rev. John J. Donovan has suc-
ceeded Mary L. Gibbons as director of
the division of families of the Catholic
Charities, Archdiocese of New York.
Father Donovan has been assistant di-
rector of the division.
The Salvation Army's second in com-
mand now is Commissioner John Mc-
Millan of Canada, chief of staff to
Commander Evangeline Booth. . . . The
new assistant director of the information
service of the Welfare Council of New
York City is Sarah E. Marshall, from
New York's Charity Organization Society
and Emergency Relief Bureau. She suc-
ceeds C. Christine Kinsman Haus, re-
signed. . . . Grace Hayes is now secretary
of the information service of the New
York League for the Hard of Hearing,
Inc., succeeding Estelle Samuelson, now
acting executive secretary. . . . Dr. M. J.
Papurt has been appointed director of
Hawthorne-Cedar Knolls School, at
Hawthorne, N. Y., maintained by the
New York Jewish Board of Guardians.
Dr. Papurt was chief psycho-clinician at
the New York State Training School for
Boys at Warwick, N. Y.
Chests and Councils — Olive W.
Swinney, a recent "M.A." from the Chi-
cago School of Social Service Adminis-
tration, and Naomi B. Sternheim, from
the Chicago Council of Social Agencies,
are current additions to the Washington,
D. C. Council of Social Agencies staff.
. . . Brainerd D. Burhoe has left the
Stamford, Conn. Community Chest to be-
come secretary of the Portland, Me.
chest. . . . George S. Chessum, who has
been executive of the Glendale, Calif,
chest, now directs the Tacoma, Wash,
chest. . . . Laura H. Arnold has
"swapped" her job as chest executive in
Marion, Ind. for directorship of the Laf-
ayette, Ind. Community Fund. . . . F.
M. Paul has succeeded E. L. Bach as
secretary of the Mishawaka, Ind., Wel-
fare Federation. . . . Successful excursion
into magazine article and short story
writing has lured Olga Gunkle Board
away from her long years of service in
publicity for the Community Chest of
Denver, Colo. She will devote her time
to writing. . . . Philip Ketchum, who
last year left community chest publicity
"to write," is author of Death in the
Library, recently announced by Crowell.
Aid to Spain — The Social Workers
Committee of the Medical Bureau to Aid
Spanish Democracy is raising funds
throughout the country to purchase medi-
cal supplies for the people of Spain. The
committee has scheduled a meeting at the
National Conference of Social Work in
Indianapolis, May 26, 3 p.m. The com-
mittee includes Harald H. Lund, chair-
man; Sheldon Glueck, Philip Klein,
Eduard Lindeman, Lillian D. Wald, A.
Gordon Hamilton, Jacob Fisher, Paul
Kellogg. Contributions and inquiries
should be addressed to the committee
headquarters, Room 600, 130 East 22
Street, New York City.
Not Exactly — The Survey blushes
with confusion for having labelled Natalie
Linderholm ex-/>/o/n-secretary instead of
ex-extension-secretary of the Boston
Family Welfare Society, in noting her
new Russell Sage Foundation job.
CONSUMERS UNION REPORTS FOR APRIL
ON:
COLD CREAMS
"... a particularly blatant example of cosmetic
quackery," says the American Medical Associa-
tion's Bureau of Investigation of a certain grossly
over-priced cold cream. Find out which brand this
is in the April issue of Consumers Union Reports.
Fifty-four brands, ranging in price from $1.53 per
ounce (dry weight) to 2.6 cents per ounce, are rated.
MEN'S SHIRTS
Twelve brands of men's shirts, ranging from in-
expensive mail-order brands to popular $2.50 and
$3 brands, were subjected to laboratory tests for
shrinkage, wearing qualities, etc. The results of
this test and of tests on other products are given
in this issue.
GARDENING
Special knowledge and skill are required to raise
vegetables which compare favorably with market
produce. A special article on GARDENING in this
issue helps you to acquire this knowledge ; gives
you valuable hints on soil conditions, and rates
several brands of fertilizers.
RADIO SETS
Supplementing a report in the November issue on
lower-priced radios, this report rates more than
ten popular models ranging in prices from $60 to
$200. Coming issues will contain reports on auto-
mobile radios.
AUTOMOBILES
Concluding the report on 1937 automobiles begun
in the March issue (which covered the lower-priced
cars), this report gives you automotive engineers'
opinions on cars delivering in the $1000-$3000
price range. Ratings are given by name. Labor
conditions under which cars are made are also
reported.
By sending in the coupon below you can
immediately secure a copy of the issue of
Consumers Union Reports described
above, together -with a copy of the 1937
edition of. the Yearly Buying Guide — a
240-page, pocket-sise handbook (complete
edition) which contains ratings of hun-
dreds of products from soaps and shoes
to automobiles and refrigerators as "Best
Buys," "Also Acceptable," and "Not
Acceptable." If you wish, you can start
with any of the previous issues of the
Reports listed at the right.
Membership fees in Consumers Union —
a non-profit, membership organization of
over 35,000 consumers — are $3 a year
for the complete edition (twelve issues of
the Reports plus the Yearly Buying
. Guide), or $'1 a year for an abridged edi-
tion covering only the less expensive
products. Start to save money now on
the things you buy ! Mail the coupon
today !
JULY. 19:tfi— Refrigerators,
Used Cars, Motor Oils.
AUG. — Oil Burners and
Stokers. Hosiery. Black List
of Drugs and Cosmet ics,
Meat.
SEPT.— Shoes. Tires. Wom-
en's Coats, Whiskies.
OCT.— Men's Shirts. Electric
Kazors. Dentifrices, Anti-
freeze Solutions, Gins.
NOV.— Winter Oils. Radios,
Toasters, Wines, Children's
Shoes.
DEC.— Fountain Pens. Elec-
trio Irons, Vacuum Cleaners,
Blankets, Nose Drops.
JAN. -FEB.. 19:17 — Shaving
Creams, Men's Suits, Cold
Reined' es. Children's Under-
garments.
MAR.— Autos. Face Powders,
Sheets, Flour. Canned Foods.
APR.— Ra din
inR, Autos,
Creams.
Sets, Garden-
Shirts, Cold
To: CONSUMERS UNION OF U. S., Inc.
55 Vandam Street, New York, N. Y.
I hereby apply for membership in Consumers Union. I enclose:
D $3 for 1 year's membership, $2.50 of which is for a year's subscrip-
tion to the complete edition of Consumers Union Reports.
D $1 for 1 year's membership, 50c of which is for a year's subscrip-
tion to the limited edition of Consumers Union Reports. (Note:
Reports on higher-priced products are not in this edition.)
I agree to keep confidential all material sent to me which is so
designated. Please begin my membership with the issue.
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Address
City and State SM-5
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
163
Book Reviews
Journalistic Prescription
THEY SHALL NOT WANT, by Maxine Davis.
Macmillan. 418 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
"\X7~HEN an alert-minded journalist
examines the relief program, the
results are bound to be of interest. Miss
Davis does not claim, and in fact does
not exhibit, the accuracy of a research
worker. Her book is not a source book
for tested truth, and its factual data
should not be quoted without verifica-
tion. Its value lies in the sweeping
picture it gives of the rise of our relief
program, and particularly in the fresh
sidelights it throws on problems long
familiar to social workers.
We have had, she says, "four years of
federal relief as breath-taking and har-
rowing as a day in an airplane in a cy-
clone." Work relief, "based on the
concept of the family wage, flouted the
whole American industrial scheme."
CWA was "a shot in the nation's eco-
nomic arm." The administrative ef-
ficiency of the smallest relief station was
damaged by successive "twitches of
economy at Washington," ending when
we "tossed the FERA into the limbo
where forgotten alphabets go."
Miss Davis pulls no punches. The
Woods Committee "is not even a dot in
history." Harry Hopkins, "an honest
man, whatever other flaws he may have,"
is "always one to leap before he looks."
The WPA, she says "has little to recom-
mend it."
"The social and human benefits are
all out of proportion to its prodigious
and unjustified cost. It is self-perpetuat-
ing. It causes dislocations in local
financing and ordinary employment.
Worst of all, it is in the hands of poli-
ticians— never too troubled by concern
for the public weal. The longer we
maintain it, the more solidly rooted it
becomes and the harder to blast it out.
From the standpoint of public opinion,
WPA has given the concept of work re-
lief a very black eye."
Unlike some prominent journalistic
commentators, Miss Davis not only
states what she believes to be wrong
with the picture, but what she thinks
should be done to set it right. As a back-
ground for her recommendations, she
went abroad in 1936 and observed the
relief-social security picture in England
and Sweden. More than one third of
the book consists of a colorful presenta-
tion of the way unemployment and need
are handled in these two countries.
In the future, she believes, "unemploy-
ment relief is going to be an ordinary
function of government in common with
164
the post office and the navy." In this
new structure, the employment exchange
will be of paramount importance; uni-
form in operation, nationally supported,
and ubiquitous. Compulsory unemploy-
ment insurance also will be nationalized,
and administered through the exchanges.
A system of planned relief works pat-
terned upon Sweden's will be ready for
prosecution in each major depression,
and will be financed by both local and
federal taxes. She believes that:
"Direct relief should be a state-fed-
eral function with standards of condi-
tions, personnel, administration, and
rates of allowances fixed by the federal
government, and with local responsibility
and partial local financing. Funds should
be allotted by the national government
on a grant-in-aid basis, the bulk of the
money to come from the states or lo-
calities and raised by all governments
by taxation."
The entire system should be integrated
on a national basis, and should be staffed
through the civil service. Nothing here
with which social workers will be likely
to differ. But in connection with direct
relief, Miss Davis urges:
"Let us have no more social work.
Let us have an automatic system, re-
sembling the British unemployment as-
sistance, operated in close cooperation
with the employment exchanges. Let us
give medical care, but eliminate all other
services, however valuable."
Here, however, it seems to the re-
viewer that Miss Davis stops short of
pushing her point home. She seems to
feel that -there exists some basis of ex-
perience superior to that of social work,
upon which, under a competitive merit
system, the product of some other train-
ing and discipline could be selected to
administer relief. What is this experi-
ence which should be rated higher in a
civil service examination than social
work? Where are the people and what
are they now doing, who should be found
and recruited to replace social workers
in this vast national system of direct as-
sistance to the needy? Miss Davis
leaves us agonized with curiosity — she
just simply doesn't say.
New York JOANNA C. COLCORD
Basic Tool for 1937
SOCIAL WORK YEAR BOOK 1937, edited by
Russell H. Kurtz. Russell Sage Foundation.
709 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
PHE profession of social work has
reason to be proud of the Social
Work Year Book. The Russell Sage
Foundation has rendered a valuable
service in making such a volume avail-
able as a tool of work and reference.
The Year Book for 1937 is the fourth
which has been published. Previous
volumes appeared for the years 1930,
1933 and 1935, under the editorship of
Fred S. Hall, now retired. The present
edition is the work of the new editor,
Russell H. Kurtz, assisted by an ad-
visory committee with David H. Hoi-
brook, chairman.
The Social Work Year Book might
perhaps better be called a current en-
cyclopedia of social work, since it re-
ports biennially on the current status of
social work, rather than merely record-
ing the events of recent months. It is
also a periodic survey of the general
field of social work since it records in an
objective, factual manner chiefly what is,
rather than history, theories, philosophies
or goals, although these latter elements,
fortunately, are not entirely excluded.
The Year Book is divided into two
parts, Part One being occupied by topi-
cal articles extending through some 560
pages. Part Two is devoted to an exten-
sive directory of national agencies, pub-
lic and private, and state agencies, public
and private.
The Year Book for 1937 shows itself
thoroughly abreast of the changing or-
ganization of public welfare services by
the introduction of articles on civil serv-
ice, merit system, Civilian Conservation
Corps, financing public social work, old
age insurance, resettlement, Social Se-
curity Acts and so forth. The volume
will be a valuable working tool for pub-
lic welfare officials as well as for private
welfare executives. It should be in the
library of every welfare agency, public
and private.
Cincinnati, Ohio C. M. BOOKMAN
Prescription -and Description
THE REALITIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT, by
Harry L. Hopkins. Works Progress Admin-
istration. 16 pp.
UNEMPLOYMENT AND ITS TREATMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES, by Dorothy C.
Kahn. American Association of Social Work-
ers. 105 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
' I *HIS attractively printed brochure
by Mr. Hopkins must be taken for
what it is — a restatement, brief, clear
and persuasive, of his thesis for minimiz-
ing'the amount and the rigors of unem-
ployment. Take periodic unemployment
censuses. Keep children longer in school
and provide for earlier retirement on
pensions or insurance. Strengthen the
public employment service. Develop low
cost housing. Improve health conditions.
Set up a structure of social security.
And provide a government operated
work program for those of employment
age who lose their jobs, thus preserving
important skills and work habits and
facilitating reabsorption by private in-
dustry. There may well be little quarrel
with the thesis. One wishes, however,
in this eighth year of the depression and
fourth year of the New Deal, that Mr.
THE SURVEY
Hopkins would give some sign of being
aware that neither he nor anyone can tell
the "whole story" in sixteen pages — that
the combined problems of employment,
unemployment and relief are gigantic
enough to call for thorough-going exam-
ination by competent and disinterested
persons whose judgments would be above
the suspicion of partisanship inevitably
attaching to office-holders or to spokes-
men of any one profession.
The pamphlet by Miss Kahn has a dif-
ferent purpose. It is a Ascription, not a
prescription. Compact and admirably
organized, making little attempt to sit in
judgment, it passes in searching review
both the problems created by large scale
unemployment in this country and the
steps taken to solve those problems.
Pre-Roosevelt measures, NRA, FERA
and its many collateral activities, the
work program, recovery measures bear-
ing directly on relief, and the Social Se-
curity Act — all receive such expert sum-
marizing as inevitably to suggest the
trite but here well-deserved phrase, "re-
quired reading." The American Asso-
ciation of Social Workers is to be
thanked for making so useful a docu-
ment so easily available.
New York ROBERT P. LANE
Subject of the Hour
SICKNESS AND INSURANCE. A STUDY OF
THE SICKNESS PROBLEM AND HEALTH INSUR-
ANCE, by Harry Alvin Millis. University of
Chicago Press. 166 pp. Price $2 postpaid of
The Survey.
DOSSIBLY there is no important
social field in which the United States
has more complete data than that cov-
ered by the studies of the Committee on
the Costs of Medical Care. Certainly
there are few social fields in which there
is available as long and varied a history
of organized social action as in the many
voluntary and compulsory health insur-
ance systems established in European
countries during the past half century
and more. How these or other methods
are to be applied to lighten the burden of
preventable sickness, premature death
and financial disaster as a result of sick-
ness, which we know to exist in the
United States, is a question widely under
discussion in many parts of this country.
Professor Millis' little volume will be
of great service to those interested in
approaching this question intelligently
and open-mindedly. Two chapters sum-
marize clearly and succinctly facts con-
cerning sickness in this country and
methods of health insurance abroad. An
enormous amount of complicated data is
synthesized here in a little more than a
hundred pages. The third section of the
book deals with the pre-War movement
for health insurance in the United
States, the proposals and programs of
recent years, and presents the author's
own tentative program. This last recom-
mends, in brief: extension of public
health services, provision of cash benefits
in sickness by an amendment of the
Social Security Act, tax-supported medi-
cal care for special groups, and or-
ganized medical care of persons in the
low income brackets in high cost ill-
nesses, financed by compulsory insurance
contributions and tax revenues.
In some respects Professor Millis'
program follows lines recommended by
the Committee on the Costs of Medical
Care, especially in advocating separation
of the administration of cash benefits and
of medical services; unlike the majority
of the committee, however, he believes
that insurance contributions should be
compulsory. In certain ways the pro-
gram suggests methods used in European
countries, though its general outline and
emphasis is very different, with a view
to the different setting in which an
American plan would operate. Profes-
sor Millis bases the care of high cost ill-
ness on an extension of group hospitali-
zation services, and leaves the bulk of
medical service, for relatively minor ill-
nesses, to be carried on much as at pres-
ent. As he suggests, such a plan might
minimize the opposition expressed by
medical organizations to most or all as-
pects of health insurance. Despite that
opposition, however, interest in the sub-
ject both within and without the pro-
fession has increased to a point which
makes especially timely this careful
statement of the situation and thought-
fully formulated proposal. M. R.
Myopic View
PRISON LIFE IS DIFFERENT, by James A.
Johnston. Houghton Mifflin, 377 pp. Price
$3 postpaid of The Survey.
PHERE is a grievous disappointment
in store for those who buy this
book, because the jacket advertises the
author as the warden of Alcatraz. He
is, but one would never learn that fact
from anything between the covers of the
book. His manuscript might as well
have been written, and perhaps was, be-
fore he took command of the prison that
the Department of Justice so proudly
hails as the American Devil's Island. It
is safe to assume that the department
permitted him to publish his book only
on condition that he studiously avoid all
reference to Alcatraz. We must there-
fore continue to rely on headlines and
hearsay for information about that in-
stitution, in which prison life is said to
be different not only from life outside
but also from life in all other prisons.
That is too bad. Many sociologists
know that the progressive Bureau of
Prisons in the Department of Justice
was lukewarm to the Alcatraz idea from
the first, and that The Rock is an ex-
pression of G-man philosophy. They
wonder why we should be expected to
be so proud of our Devil's Island while
France is abandoning hers. Many tax-
payers, moreover, paid their federal in-
come taxes just as the Johnston book
appeared. It would seem that they are
entitled to at least one brief chapter on
their very expensive venture in terror-
istic penology.
However hard-boiled Alcatraz may
be, prison men know its warden to be
one of the ablest in the business and at
the same time one of the most progres-
sive and humane. His book is the mod-
est and sincere account of his wardenship
of two of the toughest prisons that ever
existed — the California prisons at Fol-
som and San Quentin. This was twenty-
five years ago, when clubs were trumps
in most prisons and any official who
thought otherwise was considered a sob-
sister. But Johnston abolished the
straitjacket, the iron maiden and the
hooks five minutes after he took charge,
and established good discipline without
their use. He introduced high grade
medical service, education, libraries and
road camps with the most sensible wage
system ever adopted by an American
prison. It was beyond his power to
make Folsom and San Quentin good
prisons, but he brought about a decade's
advance in every year of his wardenship.
Warden Johnston writes strongly in
behalf of progressive penology and in
favor of that much maligned procedure,
parole. He speaks with weight because
of his experience and known ability. But
it must be admitted that his book is
heavy-footed and badly organized. Its
dramatic episodes lack fire, and those
sections which make no pretense of
drama are often dull. The author is
too modest and too close to his subject.
He should go to Tahiti and write a book
about Alcatraz.
AUSTIN H. MACCORMICK
Commissioner of Correction
New York City
The Cotton South
PREFACE TO PEASANTRY, by Arthur F.
Raper. The University of North Carolina
Press. 423 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
PHE manifold problems of the cot-
ton-growing "Old South" need for
their solution an intimate knowledge of
all the social and economic factors in-
volved, and any new contribution to this
subject is highly welcome. Mr. Raper
has undertaken a detailed investigation
of two counties of the Georgia Black
Belt, in order to analyze the complex
organism of the Cotton South. He suc-
ceeds in giving a vivid picture of social
and economic conditions in these two
counties, further enlivening his text with
a great number of candid camera photo-
graphs. But the picture is rather
kaleidoscopic and may, therefore, be con-
fusing to the general reader for whom
this book is no doubt intended.
The author seems to be at his best
MAY 1937
165
A Little Known Chapter in the Social Welfare History of
the United States
THE MENTALLY ILL
IN AMERICA
A History of Their Care and Treatment from Colonial
Times
By ALBERT DEUTSGH
With an Introduction by WILLIAM A. WHITE, M.D.
Probably no phase of our social history presents so shocking and persistent
a record of "man's inhumanity to man" as that relating to his treatment of
the insane. The Mentally III in America presents the complete story, from the
"dark ages" of witchcraft and demoniacal possession, through the asylum era,
down to the mental hygiene movement of our own time.
The author, who has specialized in American social history, approaches his
subject from the sociological point of view. Beginning with an introductory
chapter which traces the history of mental disorders from the earliest known
instances to the founding of the American colonies, he shows the changing
attitude toward "insanity" that shaped methods of treatment at various historical
stages, and describes the slow progress from the early confused mass of supersti-
tions and folk remedies to the scientific methodology of twentieth century-
psychiatry. He also traces, through the ages, the evolution of concepts and
attitudes in the treatment and control of the feebleminded.
His thorough and accurate work has won the approval of the foremost lead-
ers in American psychiatry. The late Dr. William A. White, in his Introduc-
tion to the book, calls it "an exceedingly illuminating presentation that may
well prove to be a spearhead for the penetration of important social facts
and the understanding of social processes which, presented with less appealing
or less startling illustration, might fail to attract attention."
As such it will prove invaluable to social workers, physicians, nurses, and
students of social problems. The socially minded layman, too, will find it an
interesting and revealing work. It is an absorbing narrative, written in an
attractive, non-technical, literary style, that will also serve as a standard refer-
ence text for years to come. "// should be widely read," says Dr. White, "for
its message is of the utmost significance."
530 pages, with illustrations, full bibliography and index; cloth S3. 00 postpaid
Published by DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY
Garden City, New York
Send orders to
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL HYGIENE
Book Department
50 West 50th Street New York City
when he sets forth and interprets socio-
logical data. His discussion of the role
of the automobile in changing the social
character of the landlord-tenant rela-
tionship brings out a most interesting
phenomenon. Likewise, the chapters on
churches and other social institutions
present a valuable addition to our knowl-
edge of the social system of the South
and the implications of the race problem.
When the book deals with economic
factors and conditions, the question
naturally arises whether the data from
two Georgia counties can indeed be
taken as representative of the whole
"Old South." As far as I could see, Mr.
Raper does not present statistical or
other evidence to prove this point; in one
case, population movements, he expressly
states that the county data are repre-
sentative only of the State of Georgia.
But even if the two counties are not fully
representative of the "Old South," Mr.
Raper's book still remains valuable for
future research as a case study.
The title, Preface to Peasantry, is
misleading; the issue of peasantry is not
taken up in any detail. And, as a matter
of fact, in spite of their feudal back-
ground, European peasants have attained
a high degree of independence and self-
direction. If the collapse of the planta-
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
166
tion system were the preface to such
peasantry, the problems of the Cotton
South would be nearing their solution.
ll'ashington, D. C. BERTA ASCH
Medical and Otherwise
PHYSICIAN. PASTOR AND PATIENT, by
George W. Jacoby, M.D. Harper. 380 pp.
Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
' I ''HE book contains almost nothing
about the relation of physician, pas-
tor and patient. Religion is treated
throughout wholly from the point of
view of an onlooker and not of a be-
liever. The book is, in fact, a collection
of brief paragraphs or chapters on an
enormous number of subjects connected,
sometimes very slightly, with medicine.
Some of the topics are treated in a mood
of lively gossip; such topics are home-
opathy, Zionism, modern witchcraft,
fighting one disease with another. Others
deal in a tabloid fashion with topics of
present interest such as divorce, steriliza-
tion, euthanasia, vitamins, professional
secrecy. Along with these there are a
number of quaint historic spotlights on
black magic, Chinese medicine, the Edict
of Tours in 1163, forbidding surgery and
dissection, and a great many others.
On the whole it may fairly be said
that the book treats no single subject or
group of subjects, but strings together a
very entertaining and accurate series of
snapshots on a great variety of medical
or quasi-medical topics. It does not deal
with problems in pastoral medicine, as
the subtitle states. We greatly need a
book on that subject but so far there is
no such book other than the Catholic
manuals. RICHARD C. CABOT, M.D.
Cambridge, Mass.
Opinion with Courage
A HISTORY OF THE PRESS AND PUBLIC
OPINION IN CHINA, by Lin Yutang. Uni-
versity of Chicago Press. 179 pp. Price $2
postpaid of The Survey.
REQUESTED by the Institute of Pa-
cific Relations to contribute to an
international program of studies of the
press and public opinion, the dis-
tinguished author of My Country and
My People might have replied that the
press is still in its infancy in China; that,
insofar as it has emancipated itself from
western models, it has failed as yet to
produce original methods or techniques
of value; and that it is not, nor ever has
been, a reflection of widely current tastes
and ideas. Instead, he wisely interpreted
his task liberally enough to give a most
engagjng picture of the ways in which,
through the ages, informed and critical
opinion on public affairs has asserted it-
self in China.
In this brief review, one can only para-
phrase the author's own summary of that
history by saying that, generally speak-
ing, the stronger a government was, the
weaker was the expression of public
opinion, and vice versa. For many cen-
turies the independent scholar has been,
as he is today, the scourge of corrupt of-
ficials and the torchbearer of social
justice. Indeed, the student movement
which is giving so much trouble to the
national government today is an essential
part of the Chinese system. But the au-
thor also stresses the fact that, again and
again, "the most heroic sacrifice of
scholars trying to maintain the purity of
politics was futile unless there was legal
protection of civil rights."
It is for such rights that the more in-
dependent writers and editors in China
are fighting today. Mr. Lin's own
courageous statement on the subject of
censorship, in the last chapter of the
present book, links him with that chain
of scholar-heroes which he traces back
two thousand years. Since it was writ-
ten, a new wave of suppression of free
speech has broken over China, dulling
the hope for a real "national unification"
under the present regime.
New York BRUNO LASKER
Poor Law History
THE MICHIGAN POOR LAW: ITS DEVELOP-
MENT AND ADMINISTRATION, WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO STATE PROVISION FOR MEDICAL
CARE OF THE INDIGENT, by Isabel Campbell
Bruce and Edith EickhofF. Edited by Sophonisba
P. Breckinridge. University of Chicago Press.
292 pp. Price $2.50.
THREE CENTURIES OF POOR LAW AD-
MINISTRATION: A STUDY OF LEGISLATION
IN RHODE ISLAND, by Margaret Creech. Intro-
ductory note by Edith Abbott. University ot
Chicago Press. 331 pp. Price $3.
THE INDIANA POOR LAW: ITS DEVELOP-
MENT AND ADMINISTRATION, WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO THE PROVISION OF STATE CARE
FOR THE SICK POOR, by Alice Shaffer, Mary
Wysor Keefer, and Sophonisba P. Breckinridge.
University of Chicago Press. 378 pp. Price $3.
All prices postpaid of The Survey
poor relief presents basic
similarities in practically all the
states where it has been studied, differ-
ences in the developments in individual
states are interestingly brought out in
these three volumes of the Poor Law
Studies of the University of Chicago.
In the Rhode Island study we see poor
relief gradually taking form in the simple
setting of the colonial town. We find the
Providence town meeting, "Under a Tree
by ye Water side," facing an empty treas-
ury and anxious to avoid new inhabitants
likely to become public charges. We follow
the history of the dealings of Portsmouth
and "ould John Mott," with his "passage
to the Barbades Island and back again."
In Indiana we find early state super-
vision, under the Board of State Charities,
created in 1889 as the result of a "con-
cern" on the part of the Society of
Friends. In connection with the work
of this board we encounter the distin-
guished names of six presidents of the Na-
tional Conference of Social work — Tim-
othy Nicholson, Oscar C. McCullough,
Francis H. Gavisk, Amos W. Butler,
Ernest P. Bicknell, and Alexander John-
son — and we find the poor law of 1899,
HARPER BOOKS FOR SURVEY READERS!
. . . A new text for training group leaders!
STUDIES IN GROUP BEHAVIOR
By GRACE L. COYLE
Associate Professor of Sociology, ff estern Reserve University
"Like a girder thrust under an emerging structure, this book provides further
realistic foundation for group work. Using five case histories of typical groups,
written in the mood of the participant observer, Dr. Coyle has produced a
running analysis calculated to provoke genuinely critical thinking and dis-
rut-siun. Her treatment is neither wholly theoretical nor wholly practical. It is
realistic. That is to say, it is both. Her introductory chapter which includes
what might almost be termed an anatomy of leadership in relation to the group
process, is a valuable contribution to the literature of group work. This book
will prove an invaluable training instrument both with staff groups and with
group work students in professional schools." — CHARLES E. HENDRY, Associate
Professor of Sociology, George Williams College; Chairman, The National
Association for the Study of Group Work $2.75
. . . A new manual for vocational guidance workers!
APTITUDES AND APTITUDE TESTING
By WALTER V. BINGHAM, PhD.
In thi? frank and critical study, a distinguished psychologist sets forth con-
sidered conclusions drawn from his careful and intensive research into the
whole problem of aptitudes and aptitude testing. Vocational counselors and
personnel workers, wishing to consider the use of aptitude tests, can now turn
to this authoritative new book for complete information on principles and
methods.
"Dr. Bingham's book is a major contribution to the field of vocational psy-
chology and vocational counseling. He has done a superb job." — DONALD G.
PATERSON, Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota $3.00
. . . A new text for adult education
courses on contemporary problems!
SELECTED SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
Edited and Arranged by MYER COHEN
San Francisco School of Social Studies
With an Introduction by ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN
Never before has there been available for non-legal students of the Constitution,
in relation to modern problems, a study manual which focuses attention on the
major issues of today. The editor has successfully compiled this carefully edited
material in a way to suggest a potentially wide market for this book among all
students of constitutional problems $2.50
HARPER & BROTHERS, Dept. S
49 East 33rd Street
New York City
"said to be the first instance of the en-
actment of charity organization princi-
ples into law, and their application to an
entire state."
In the care of the sick poor, Michigan
pioneered as apparently the first state to
create a public state hospital in connection
with her state university.
The studies of medical relief through
the university hospitals in Michigan and
Indiana are of particular interest today,
as the problem of medical aid becomes
more and more sharply defined and in
some places tends to become a more or
less separate "category" of public assist-
ance.
The collections of documents and ju-
In answcriiifi advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
167
dicial decisions by Miss Breckinridge in
the Michigan and Indiana studies and
Miss Creech's ancient case histories and
other documents are valuable for refer-
ence and in supplementing the text.
ARTHUR DUNHAM
Institute of Public and Social
Administration, University of Michigan
Changed for the Better
OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE MEDICAL
EDUCATION OF NEGROES, by Gertrude E.
Sttirges and E. H. L. Corwin. Scribner. 293
pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
' I AHE title of this volume is something
of a misnomer since the authors do
not write of the large subject which that
title indicates but of a specific local situ-
We Invite You
To Visit Us . .
In Indianapolis .
WE SPEND most of the year on Morningside Heights in New York,
but from May 23 to 29 we are going to be in Indianapolis so that all
who attend the National Conference of Social Work can conveniently
examine at first hand the social work books published by Columbia
University Press. These present notes are merely to invite you to look
us up in Indianapolis, and to list a few of the books which we are
taking with us.
First of all, we expect to introduce Porter R. Lee's "Social Work:
Cause and Function and Other Papers." This new book will be the
ninth in the series published for the New York School of Social Work.
There will also be on display the other New York School books, among
which are Gordon Hamilton's "Social Case Recording" ($2.50); and
Mary Antoinette Cannon and Philip Klein's "Social Case Work" ($5.00).
The most recent study sponsored by the Welfare Council of New
York City, Sophia M. Robison's "Can Delinquency Be Measured?"
($3.00), will, of course, be among those volumes present, along with
the others in this series, such as Ruth Reed's "The Illegitimate Family
in New York City" ($3.75), and Kate Huntley's "Financial Trends in
Organized Social Work in New York City" ($3.75), to name only two.
We shall also have on display two books published for the American
Association of Social Workers: John A. Fitch's "Vocational Guidance
in Action" ($2.75), and Margaretta Williamson's "The Social Worker
in the Prevention and Treatment of Delinquency" ($2.50).
Finally, we shall offer for your inspection Janet Thornton's "The Social
Component in Medical Care" ($3.00), which was published in Febru-
ary and which was the social work book-of-the-month for April.
There will be many more, and we invite you to see for yourself just
what they are by visiting our exhibit at the Conference. Or, if you
don't want to wait for the Conference, an order to the address below
will receive our prompt attention, if we aren't too busy getting ready
for that trip to Indianapolis.
Columbia University Press
. . . Box B528, 2960 Broadway
New York, New York
ation — Harlem Hospital, New York. As
a matter of fact that situation has
changed considerably since the authors
gathered their material for this report.
The report is in three parts. The first
is a brief and somewhat sketchy pres-
entation of the Negro medical, hospital
and health situation in the country at
large, with special reference to New
York. This covers about thirty pages.
The second part (chapters IV to X,
inclusive) deals with the professional,
environmental and administrative fea-
tures of the Harlem Hospital in New
York. The third part consists of a sum-
mary of the principal findings of the
study and recommendations. The study
lasted well into the summer of 1933. It
was published at the end of 1936. In
the meantime so many changes have
taken place not only in New York City,
but in other hospitals concerned with
care of Negroes that even its generaliza-
tions are out-dated. At this time, in-
stead of there being a shortage of places
for Negro interns, approved hospitals
accepting Negro physicians have in-
creased to such an extent that there are
now hardly more than half enough grad-
uates to meet the demand.
Harlem Hospital has been a battle-
ground for years, even before the ques-
tion of racial discrimination entered the
picture. This report really grew out of
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
168
a community demand that the place be
cleaned up. It began as an investigation
of charges of political control, slipped a
bit to become an appraisal, and finally
cushioned itself on a widespread study
of medical problems of Negroes. The
committee never was prepared to make
such a study and naturally the report is
a disappointment. It is fair to say that
the hospital under the present adminis-
tration is an improved institution and
that the opportunities for Negro
physicians have been greatly enlarged.
There are probably dozens of hospital
appraisals by the same authors which
have never been published in book form.
They should be relieved of considerable
responsibility in this case, as it is likely
they realize the shortcomings of such a
publication. Private funds were secured
to cover cost of printing.
M. O. BOUSFIELD, M.D.
Director of Negro Health
Julius Rosenwald Fund
Anatomy of Disability
THE SOCIAL COMPONENT IN MEDICAL
CARE, by Janet Thornton. In collaboration
with Marjorie Strauss Knauth. Columbia Uni-
versity Press. 411 pp. Price $3 postpaid of
The Survey.
P\ ISABILITY is one thing and illness
^"^ is another, yet the two evade logical
separation like the proverbial egg and
chicken. This book is a sort of anatomy
of disability. It is based upon case mate-
rial studied jointly by a number of doc-
tors and social workers and all carefully
summarized by one physician. The ideas
giving form and meaning to the whole
are formulated by a medical social work-
er. Both illness and disability are thus
dealt with authentically, and the ques-
tion of causal interaction between physi-
cal and social factors, which is central
within this subject, is treated with due
conservatism. The concept of relation-
ship upon which the argument of the
book rests is best stated in the author's
own words.
"The idea which emerges most clearly
from the material assembled for this re-
port is that of disability variously mani-
fested ... it seems that adverse social
factors have significance in medical care
chiefly because of their power to disable.
We have claimed that these factors ex-
pressed as deprivations, strains and dis-
satisfactions have physiological effects,
namely, depletion of body substance,
fatigue, emotional tension. These effects
seem of special importance in aggravat-
ing disability already started by organic
disease."
The evidence is most carefully sifted
in the working out of these ideas. The
material is not used statistically; instead
a method called "demonstration" is em-
ployed. The report is packed full of il-
lustration and close reasoning. To medi-
cal social workers, and I think to all who
care to read it one tenth as painstakingly
as it is written, it is full of interest and
stimulus.
A native sureness of perception and an
immense unsentimentality characterize
the author's handling of her subject.
This gives the reader confidence. I do
not know whether such a work could
ever be the social work book-of-the-
month, but I predict for it a long and
busy life.
New York ANTOINETTE CANNON
Parents Preferred
BEING BORN" — A BOOK OF FACTS FOR BOYS AND
GIRLS by Frances Bruce Strain. Appleton-
Ccntury. 144 pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
OEVERAL years ago Frances Bruce
^ Strain published an outstanding book
on sex education for parents. Being
Born — her latest book — is addressed di-
rectly to the pre-adolescent child.
That any book is a poor substitute for
personal discussion as a first approach
to this subject, Mrs. Strain would un-
doubtedly agree. Sex information should
come little by little, in answer to the
child's expanding needs, if it is to be
emotionally and intellectually digested.
But as a review and clarification of ma-
terial, much of which has already been
learned piecemeal in the parent-child
give and take, such a book can serve a
valuable purpose. Or it may prove a
helpful tool in the hands of a mother
who is emotionally prepared to meet her
child's questions but finds herself a bit
hazy as to the more difficult facts. To
present to the child a sex education book
— even as good a one as this — as a sub-
stitute for more personal instruction
would seem a poor second best, justified
only where the parent finds herself emo-
tionally unable to supply something
better.
Within the limits, then, of what a book
of this type can be expected to do for a
child, this is an excellent one. Basing
her approach on the questions raised by
hundreds of school children to whom she
has presented this subject, Mrs. Strain
has produced a clear, straightforward
account of human reproduction, free
from the sentimentality and moralizing
which mars most books of the kind.
Throughout, the approach is dignified
and interesting but one questions the
amount of biological detail included, con-
sidering the age level addressed.
HELEN G. STERNAU
Child Study Association of America
Omnibus
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, by Lloyd V. Ballard.
Appleton-Century. 514 pp. Price $4 postpaid of
The Sit rtr.v.
T IKE many another writer in the field
of the social sciences, Mr. Ballard can
do a more skillful job in discussing speci-
fic data, such as factors in family disor-
ganization, than in treating the theoreti-
cal aspects of his subject. "Social Institu-
Two epoch-making books by
VIRGINIA P. ROBINSON
Acting Director of the Pennsylvania School of Social Work
Recently Published:
Supervision in
Social Case Work
"The incalculable service this book may render the field of
case work is that of stimulating case workers and supervisors to
deeper, more exacting scrutiny of what they have set them-
selves up to do and of the extent to which they have accepted
responsibility for doing it." — The Family. 215 pages. $2.50.
A Changing
Psychology in
Social Case Work
"... presents one of the most challenging discussions of social
case work that has ever appeared. . . . No case worker can
afford to neglect it." — The Annals. 210 pages. $2.50.
The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA
tions," he informs the reader in his defi-
nitive first chapter, "are sets of organ-
ized human relationships purposively
established by the common will," but by
the next page we are uncertain whether
the family and the church are institutions.
He so treats them later in the book, but
here we are told that "social institutions,
then, are to be regarded neither as phil-
osophical abstractions nor as disembodied,
impersonal entities for they do not exist
apart from the individuals who compose
them." Yet institutions certainly do exist
apart from the specific individuals. The
Family is an institution; Tom Smith's
family is not. If the author were clearer
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
169
in the development of his definition and
consistent in its use, the basic discussion
would be more valuable.
Following the introductory chapter de-
fining social institutions are six chapters
on The Family: a Social Institution; Its
Social Constitution; Its Institution; Dis-
organization; Disintegration; and Reor-
ientation. Then the author turns to edu-
cation and the school (four chapters) ;
the public library; the state, its structure,
forms, functions, organs (electorate, legis-
lative bodies, judiciary, and so on), and
its social pathology. Then we learn of the
social settlement, the health center, rec-
reation, religion and the church.
In
THE BIOLOGY OF
HUMAN CONFLICT
DR. TRIGANT BURROW, Scientific Director of The
Lifwynn Foundation, says —
"Recent years, with their world-wide social disoriemations and their concomitant
ineffectual striving for social order and peace, have demonstrated the unques-
tioned need for the scientific study of man's relation to man . . . Man now
needs to relinquish his role of mere onlooker in relation to the processes
which shape his life and, whether layman or professional, to become an
intimate and integral participant in the study of these processes."
' I 'HIS book presents a fundamentally altered attitude
•*• toward the problem of mental disease. The author
applies to disorders of human behavior the same
scientific approach that medicine long ago
adopted toward infectious diseases.
MACMILLAN
New York
Education for Marriage
FIRST STEPS IN PROGRAM BUILDING .50
Janet Fowler Nelson — Margaret Miller
What kind of program shall we set up? Five discussions are
suggested for the Euthenics Committee.
NO DATE HAS BEEN SET FOR THE WEDDING .25
Janet Fowler Nelson
For the girl who is considering the problems of postponed marriage.
Questions for discussion.
WORKING WIVES .35
Janet Fowler Nelson
For the business girl who is considering marriage via the two-job
route. Arranged for group discussion.
LOVE IN THE MOVIES
Janet Fowler Nelson
(Reprinted from the Womans Press, April, 1936 J.
10 for .25
THE WOMANS PRESS
600 Lexington Avenue New York. X. Y.
1937' 's Most Significant Case-Work Publication
"THE SHORT CONTACT IN SOCIAL CASE WORK"
by ROBERT S. WILSON, Ph.D., staff associate of the National Association for
Travelers Aid and Transient Service.
Volume I — General Theory and Application to Two Fields — Trav-
elers Aid and Public Welfare
Volume 2 — Selected Short-Contact Case Records
$2.50 for both volumes. $1.50 for either volume
Order from THE SURVEY
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR TRAVELERS AID AND TRANSIENT SERVICE
1270 Sixth Avenue New York City
In- aiuweritig advertisements please mention SURVEY
170
There is a mass of varied, informative
and usable material on these widely dif-
ferent subjects which will certainly profit
a student new to the field.
MURRAY H. LEIFFER
Garrett Biblical Institute
Eranston, III.
Don't Invest, Protect
LIFE INSURANCE: A LEGALIZED RACKET, by
Mort and E. A. Gilbert. Farrar and Rinehart.
223 pp. $2.50.
ARE YOU A STOCKHOLDER? by Alden Win
throp. Covici-Friede. 320 pp. $2.50. Prices
postpaid of The Survey.
rXDNCERN over the plight of the
"'average policy holders who know little
of the values (or non-values) they have
in their insurance contracts is the theme
of Life Insurance: A Legalized Racket.
According to the authors, insurance is a
form of protection for dependents and
should remain just that. The cost of pro-
tection insurance is low; it is the inclu-
sion of such features as "saving" and "in-
vestment" which creates the present high
costs and gives the policy holder very
little for his money. The latter forms are
sources of "big money" for the companies.
Therefore, agents, looking to their own
interest, sell such policies by high pres-
sure, frequently misleading methods.
The book is designed to give concrete
assistance to those wishing to purchase
the best protection for their money. The
usual forms of policies are analyzed, and
a renewable term policy is recommended,
with considerable detail of argument.
This type of contract is not popular with
companies or agents, because it lacks the
features (savings and investment) which
create huge reserves but are of little bene-
fit to the policy holder. The authors be-
lieve holders of the expensive policies will
gain by the services of the "twister" who
will advise them on obtaining new con-
tracts. Their enthusiasm on this point
overlooks the fact that the "twister," like
the original agent, is a salesman whose
advice might not be without self interest.
The authors' moral is: 'Get protection,
but do not try to save or invest by insur-
ance. You do neither, and you jeopardize
the protective feature."
Are You a Stockholder? adds little to
the existing literature on the helpless
situation of the security holders of mod-
ern corporations. It includes a number of
illustrations of managers who disregard
stockholders' interests while they feather
their own nests. The author tends to at-
tribute the stockholders' dilemma to the
devious techniques of accounting which
hide the true financial conditions of the
companies. The last few chapters are de-
voted to a discussion of New Deal legis-
lation to control the issue and sale of
securities.
The book has no well knit plan. As
one reads through the chapters it is diffi-
cult to discover at what the author is
driving and how the parts are related.
Mill MONTHLY
There is a brief and inadequate account
of the rise of corporations; a sketch of
Aladdin's exploits and the development of
puff writing; then back to corporation
finance. In an effort to appeal to the
popular reader, the writing is overdone
and full of verbiage. Coolidge is Silent
Cal; Hoover, the Sage of Palo Alto; and
so on. The author might have done well
by taking a lead from the writing of John
T. Flynn, whom he quotes admiringly.
New York University Lois McDoNALD
Dark History
BLACK LAWS OF VIRGINIA, by June Pur-
cell Guild. Whittet & Shepperson. 249 pp. Price
$2 postpaid of The Survey.
' I ''HIS comprises an exhaustive and
carefully annotated resume of all the
Virginia code legislation regarding Ne-
groes. Since the legal record runs back
to the earliest colonial days the present
volume, of course, is chiefly a history
of Negroes' disabilities through the dark
days of slavery and reconstruction. It is
interesting to note how hopelessly com-
plicated and conflicting all these efforts
were and how often they involved their
perpetrators in dilemmas and legal con-
fusion. The author, evidently sympathetic
with the Negro's eventual disentangle-
ment from injustice and exploitation,
traces this elaborate patchwork quilt of
historic injustices, obviously to point the
moral of what she frankly calls "the
Black Albatross hung around the neck
of the Old Dominion."
Howard University ALAIN LOCKE
Food for Health
DIETETICS SIMPLIFIED, by L. Jean Bogert
and Mame T. Porter. Macmillan. 637 pp.
Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
TN a preface to their book, these two
authors, both experienced and authori-
tative in their field, assert that, "Most
people realize fully that food is the best
medicine for the prevention and treat-
ment of disease."
How to choose the right foods for the
maintenance and restoration of health,
how to plan daily diets and how prop-
erly to cook various kinds of food are
some of the subjects discussed in a simple
and readable way.
The book will be helpful to the in-
telligent homemaker anxious to keep her
family well. It may also prove valuable
to the one who is serving as home nurse
under the doctor's supervision. The types
of diet which are generally prescribed
for patients suffering with diabetes, tu-
berculosis, nephritis, gout, and so on,
are described in considerable detail.
Many menus and recipes are given. In-
teresting illustrative material includes
photographs showing a small child giving
herself an insulin injection, a machine
irradiating milk, and a baby suffering
from "nutritional edema."
The authors believe that, "The public
health worker, teacher or nurse needs to
SOLVING PERSONAL
PROBLEMS
Harrison Sacket Elliott and Grace Loucks Elliott
"A counsellor could not find a better book to put into the hands of the average
person seeking better self-understanding. The authors have written out of a
wide knowledge of their subject, both in theory and practice."
— The Survey.
#2.00
WOMEN AFTER FORTY
Grace Loucks Elliott
"Should be read and reread not only by the women to whom it is especially ad-
dressed but also by younger women and by teachers of girls." — New York Times.
#1.25
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, New York
About to be published
PHYSICIANS AND MEDICAL CARE
By ESTHER LUCILE BROWN
THIS study, identical in format and general plan with SOCIAL WORK AS A
PROFESSION, Includes sections on the newer forms of furnishing medical service
and the problem of more and better medical care for all the people which will
be of immediate interest to social workers and persons in the public health field.
75 cents
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
130 East 22nd Street
New York
know something of the food habits of the
foreign-born," so they have included an
interesting section on this subject.
New York BEULAH FRANCE, R.N.
New Life for a Past Master
COMTE, by F. S. Marvin. Wiley. 216 pp. Price
$1.75 postpaid of The Survey.
Comte to a long riding of his hobby, the
world's progress toward international
organization. Your respect for his his-
torical acumen may receive a shock when
you find him sagely concluding that the
want of organization in industry which
"led millions to a state of ignoble and
monotonous poverty . . . has been large-
TT is eighty years since the christener ly remedied," and that however the war
of the still adolescent, not to say in-
fantile, science of sociology died, with the
typically paranoid last words, "What an
irreparable loss!" Even to the professed
student of social theory he is very dead
indeed.
Mr. Marvin, already favorably known
for his The Living Past and The Cen-
tury of Hope, has the breadth of knowl-
edge necessary to compass Comte's
gigantic synthesis, and the sympathy with
his animating ideals requisite to make
him live again for us. In fact this
sympathy is so genuine that it leads him
not only to gloss over the more eccentric
(would some of us say "fascist"?) of his
subject's ideas, but to digress from
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in Abyssinia may end, organs (like the
League of Nations) for carrying out col-
lective decisions must grow in strength.
For all that, it is an excellent little
book. If you stand in dread of the mas-
ter's thousands of pages of turgid writ-
ing but wish to see him exhibited as a
child of the Revolutionary period; if you
would clarify your ideas as to his
famous law of the three stages in the
growth of human thinking and the kind
of future social order which can be based
upon the achievements of the positive or
scientific spirit, you can hardly do better
than to read Marvin.
W. REX CRAWFORD
University of Pennsylvania
n
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CHICAGO
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1936
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New Studies for Group Workers,
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BESIDES BUSINESS
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A different approach to the
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TH E RHYTHM
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til
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viuont of th* SOCIAL SECURITY ACT Tk*u ,.ctk*M of th* *ct .nvol..
difficult Konomic Mid political prabbmi »W*»i m-H t» f*c*d .(-••'•
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Our Government — For Spoils or Service?
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This Question of Relief
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SOCIAL SECURITY
IN THE UNITED STATES— 1937
A symposium on Unemployment Insurance,
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TUBERCULOSIS EDUCATION
By Elma Rood
In readily available form are suggestions on:
Steps in the development of a community-
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exhibits, dramatics and other visual helps.
725 pages illustrated with 16 graphs and
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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of Children's Home for
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family welfare and public welfare, 2 years
in social research, wishes position in either
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Your Own Agency
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Jo^t |£«/u*/cX
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GERTRUDE R. STEIN, INC.
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11 East 44th Street NEW YORK
MUrray Hill 2-4784
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DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
Library Service
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 520
North Michigan Ave., Chicago. To aid in
the extension and improvement of library
service.
Child Welfare
BOYS' CLUBS OF AMERICA, INC., 381 Fourth
Avenue, N.Y.C. National service organization
of 291 Boys' Clubs located in 153 cities. Fur-
nishes program aids, literature, and educa-
tional publicity for promotion of Boys' Club
Movement ; field service to groups or individ-
uals interested in leisure-time leadership for
boys, specializing with the underprivileged.
BERKSHIRE INDUSTRIAL FARM, Canaan,
New York. A national, non-sectarian farm
school for problem boys. Boys between 12
and 14 received through private surrender
or court commitment. Supported by agreed
payments from parents or other responsible
persons, in addition to voluntary contribu-
tions. For further information address Mr.
Harry H. Graham, Sup't., or the New York
Office at 101 Park Ave., Tel: LEx. 2-3147.
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA—
C. C. Carstens, director. 130 E. 22nd Street,
New York City. A league of children's agen-
cies and institutions to secure improved
standards and methods in their various fields
of work. It also co-operates with other chil-
dren's agencies, cities, states, churches, fra-
ternal orders and other civic groups to work
out worth-while results in phase of child
welfare in which they are interested.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSER-
IES— 130 East 22nd Street, New York City.
To federate day nurseries in the U. S. and
assist them to establish and maintain ap-
proved standards of care.
Community Chests
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS. INC.
—155 East 44th Street, New York. Informa-
tion and consultation about cooperative plan-
ning and financing of social work through
chests and councils of social agencies.
Foundations
AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND,
INC. — 15 West 16th Street, New York. A
national organization for research and field
service. Activities include : assistance to state
and local agencies in organizing activities
and promoting legislation ; research in legis-
lation, vocations, statistics, and mechanical
appliances for the blind ; maintenance of a
reference lending library. M. C. Migel, Presi-
dent ; Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION — For the Im-
provement of Living Conditions — Shelby M.
Harrison, Director ; 130 E. 22nd St., New
York. Departments: Charity Organization,
Delinquency and Penology, Industrial Stu-
dies, Library, Recreation, Remedial Loans,
Social Work Interpretation, Social Work
Year Book, Statistics, Surveys. The publica-
tions of the Russell Sage Foundation offer
to the public in practical and inexpensive
form some of the most important results of
its work. Catalogue sent upon request.
Industrial Democracy
Health
AMERICAN MOUTH HEALTH ASSOCIATION
— Essex Building, Minneapolis, Minn. Hon.
Henrik Shipstead, President ; Jacob G.
Cohen, Secretary, Activities. Promotes
mouth health teaching in the schools and
community organizations for mouth health
work ; offers suggestions and plans of pro-
cedure to public health officials. Publica-
tions. "Mouth Health Quarterly," $1.50 ;
"Mouth Health Library Series," free to
local groups interested in mouth health.
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL
HYGIENE, INC.— Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles,
president ; Dr. C. M. Hincks, general direc-
tor ; Clifford W. Beers, secretary : 50 West
60th Street, New York City. Pamphlets on
mental hygiene, child guidance, mental
disease, mental defect, psychiatric social
work and other related topics. Catalogue of
publications sent on request. "Mental Hy-
giene." quarterly, $3.00 a year.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR PUBLIC
HEALTH NURSING— 50 W. 50th St., New
York. Dorothy Deming, R. N., Gen. Dir.
Advisory service, statistics, monthly maga-
zine.
NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION—
60 West 60th Street, New York, Dr. Kendall
Emerson, managing director. Pamphlets of
methods and program for the prevention of
tuberculosis. Publications sold and distributed
through state associations in every state.
American Review of Tuberculosis, medical
journal, $8.00 a year ; and Monthly Bulletin,
house organ, free.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE— A
Clearing House, cooperating with social work-
ers in referring indigent mothers to medically
directed birth control clinics in 41 states, in-
cluding 17 centers in Greater New York. In
areas lacking* centers, qualified physicians are
available. Phone or write: 615 Madison
Avenue, New York City. WIckersham 2-8600.
President: Clarence Cook Little. Medical
Director: Eric M. Matsner, M.D.
New York City
THE BIRTH CONTROL CLINICAL RESEARCH
BUREAU, 17 West 16th Street; MARGARET
SANGER, Director ; has added evening ses-
sions, Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
from 7 to 9 P.M., for the benefit of mothers
who work and cannot come to the Clinic
daily from 9 to 4.
National Conferences
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL
WORK— Edith Abbott, President, Chicago:
Howard R. Knight, Secretary, 82 N. High
St., Columbus, O. The Conference is an
organization to discuss the principles of
humanitarian effort and to increase the
efficiency of social service agencies. Each
year it holds an annual meeting, publishes
in permanent form the Proceedings of the
meeting, and issues a quarterly Bulletin.
The sixty-fourth annual convention of the
Conference will be held in Indianapolis, Ind.,
May 23-29, 1987. Proceedings are sent free
of charge to all members upon payment of
a membership fee of $5.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH
SOCIAL WELFARE— Harry L. Glucksman,
President; M. W. Beckelman, Secretary, 67
W. 47th St.. New York, N. Y. Organized
to discuss Jewish life and welfare, Jewish
social service programs and programs of
social and economic welfare. The 1937
Annual Meeting will be held in Indianapolis,
Ind., May 20-23. The Conference publishes
a magazine, Jewish Social Service Quarterly,
a news bulletin, Jewish Conference, and Pro-
ceedings of its Annual Conference. Minimum
Annual Membership Fee $2.
Racial Adjustment
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., with its
44 branches improves social conditions of
Negroes seeking "not alms, but opportunity"
for them. Secures and trains social workers.
Investigates conditions of city life as bases
for practical work. Publishes OPPOR-
TUNITY, Journal of Negro Life. Solicits
gifts. 1133 Broadway, New York, N. Y.
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY—
Promotes a better understanding of problem!
of democracy in industry through its
pamphlet, research and lecture services and
organization of college and city groups. Ex-
ecutive Directors, Harry W. Laidler and
Norman Thomas, 112 East 19th Street, Ne'
York City.
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Religious Organizations
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS
—105 East 22nd Street, New York City.
The Inter-Denominational body of 23 wo-
men's home missions boards of the United
States and Canada uniting in program and
financial responsibility for enterprises which
they agree to carry cooperatively, such as
Christian social service in Migrant labor
camps, and Christian character building
programs in Indian American government
schools.
President, Mrs. Millard L. Robinson
Executive Secy., Edith E. Lowry
Associate Secy., Charlotte M. Burnham
Western Field Secy., Adela J. Ballard
Migrant Supervisor, Gulf to Great Lakes
Area, Mrs. Kenneth D. Miller
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN,
INC. — 1819 Broadway, New York City. Mrs.
Arthur Brin, President : Mrs. Maurice L.
Goldman, Chairman Ex. Com. ; Mrs. Marion
M. Miller, Executive Director. Organization
of Jewish women initiating and developing
programs and activities in service for for-
eign born, peace, social legislation, adult
Jewish education, and social welfare. Con-
ducts bureau of international service. Serves
as clearing bureau for local affiliated groups
throughout the country.
NATIONAL BOARD, YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATIONS, 600 Lexington Ave.,
New York City. An international Christian
woman movement devoted to service for
women and girls and the attempt to help
build a society in which the abundant life
is possible for every individual.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS— 347 Madison
Avenue, New York City. Eskil C. Carlson,
President; John E. Manley, General Secre-
tary. A federation of 1123 local associations,
through state and area councils, for Chris-
tian character education among youth. Meets
annually to determine service projects and
budget for cooperation with local member
organizations in program emphasis and in-
terpretation, fiscal operations, etc. Empha-
sizes lay-professional cooperation, group and
club activity, and self-governing programs
of physical, social and religious education,
public affairs. International education and
special cooperative projects, citizenship, etc.
Specialized work among transportation, army
and navy, student, colored, rural, and certain
other groups.
Penology
THE OSBORNE ASSOCIATION, INC., 114 East
30th Street, New York, N. Y. Telephone
CAledonia 6-9720-9721. Activities ly-Collects
information about penal institutions and
works to improve standards of care in penal
institutions. Aids discharged prisoners in
their problems of readjustment by securing
employment and giving such other assistance
as they may require. Wm. B. Cox, Executive
Secretary.
Recreation
NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION—
315 Fourth Ave., New York City. To bring
to every boy and girl and citizen of America
an adequate opportunity for wholesome,
happy play and recreation.
Public Housing
NATIONAL PUBLIC HOUSING CONFER-
ENCE—112 East 19th Street, New York City.
Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, President ;
Evans Clark, Chairman, Board of Directors ;
Louis H. Pink, Treasurer ; Helen Alfred.
Executive Director. A private, educational
association of individuals and organizations.
Its purpose is to promote slum clearance and
low-rent rehousing for low income families,
by means of local housing authorities and
with the aid of Federal loans and subsidies.
1896
Associate and Special Group Meetings
Consultations — Exhibits
1937
FORTY-ONE years ago, the eighteenth annual meeting of the NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF
SOCIAL WORK first met in Indianapolis.
1937 finds that city again preparing for the Conference — the sixty-fourth annual meeting — the
largest in its history.
The following organizations, meeting with the National Conference, invite delegates to attend their
special meetings, to confer about specific professional problems or to view their exhibits and displays
and examine the most recent literature pertaining to social work.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE, INC.
Meetings: Claypool, May 24 and 27, 4 to 5:30 P.M.
Athenaeum Ballroom, May 25, 2 to 2:30 P.M.
AMERICAN HOME ECONOMICS ASSOCIATION
Dept. of Home Economics in Social Work
AMERICAN LESION
National Child Welfare Division
AMERICAN PUBLIC WELFARE ASSOCIATION
AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. INC.
Consultation & Exhibit, Murat Temple
CHURCH CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK
Federal Council of Churches
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS, INC.
Consultation Service, Hotel Lincoln
EPISCOPAL SOCIAL WORK CONFERENCE
Afternoon sessions; Wednesday and Friday Luncheons;
Thursday dinner meeting. Programs available at 281
Fourth Avenue, New York City
FAMILY WELFARE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
and THE FAMILY
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN
LIFE INSURANCE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU
Antlers Hotel. May 26, Luncheon; May 27 meeting at
2 P.M.
MOTHERS' AID ASSOCIATION
Consultation Service
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GOODWILL INDUSTRIES
NATIONAL BOARD OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTES
May 24 — 4 P.M. — "Giving the Future a Past."
May 25—4 P.M. — Joint session with other agencies in the
immigration and naturalization field.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH SOCIAL WELFARE
Hotel Severin, May 19-23
NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR THE PHYSICALLY
HANDICAPPED
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSERIES
Hq. Claypool, May 27, 2 to 2:30, "Constructive Services
of Day Nursery for Parents and Children."
May 28, 3:30 to 5, Round Table Discussion, "Place of Day
Nursery in Child Welfare."
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF SETTLEMENTS
NATIONAL PROBATION ASSOCIATION
May 21-25, Claypool Hotel
Subjects: probation, parole, juvenile courts, community
preventive movements
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
Consultations by arrangement at the Foundation booth
SOCIAL WORK PUBLICITY COUNCIL
Consultations and Exhibits, Murat Temple
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Survey Graphic and The Survey Midmonthly
Book Exhibits
1916
SIXTY-FOURTH MEETING
National Conference of Social Work
INDIANAPOLIS
176
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office:
762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Editorial Office:
112 East 19 Street, New York
To which all communications should be sent
THE SURVEY— Monthly— JS3. 00 a Year
SURVEY GRAPHIC— Monthly— $3.00 a Year
Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIPPI.E, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRIGO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
JUNE 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 6
Social Workers Grope for Unity
GERTRUDE SPRINGER AND HELEN CODY BAKER 179
Public Assistance EDITH ABBOTT 181
Future "Musts". ... HARRY I.. HOPKINS ROBERT F. WAGNER 182-183
Industrial Relations FRANK MURPHY 184
This Year and Next 186
For the Children of Spain 191
The Common Welfare 192
Next Steps in Federal Relief • Citizens' Job • Security Up-
held • Class of 1937 • Labor Standards • And So On
The Social Front 194
Relief • The Insurances • The Labor Front • Public As-
sistance • Adult Education • Youth • Child Welfare • The
Public's Health • Hospitals • Dollars and Doctors • Inter-
pretation • Professional • People and Things • The Pam-
phlet Shelf
Readers Write 203
Book Reviews 204
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• A boy has a right to make a mistake. —
SANKJRD BATES, director, Boys' Club of
America.
• We shall never be rich enough to repeat
the mistakes of the past. — DR. HAVEN EMER-
SON, studv director, Hospital Survey of New
York.
• News by radio can't take the place of
a newspaper. You can't hunt it up later to
settle an argument. — The Beacon-Journal,
Akron, Ohio.
• We approach the ultimate questions of life
in the spirit of a man who has overslept and
is trying to catch a train. — PROF. WILLIAM
ADAMS BROWN, Union Theological Seminary.
• Progress, we must remember, is not the
mere correction of evils. Progress is the con-
stant replacing of the best there is with some-
thing still better. — EDWARD A. FILENE, Bos-
ton.
• I am asked to talk about that simple ques-
tion— the transition from emergency relief to
relief on a permanent basis. I hope I live that
long! — EDMUND B. BUTLER, secretary, the
New York City Emergency Relief Bureau.
• However far the present drift toward dic-
tatorships may go, it is not a change in the
course of social evolution, but a temporary
eddy. It remains true that the essential pro-
cess of civilized society is a common search
for fairness and reasonableness, and not reli-
ance on arbitrary power. — ARTHUR E. MOR-
GAN IB Antloch Notes.
So They Say
• Personality is the individual's social stim-
ulus value. — DR. WILLIAM HEALY, Boston, in
Salmon .Memorial Lectures.
• As we inspect the state of learning in
America we discover that the higher it gets
the more confused it becomes. — ROBERT M.
HUTCHINS, in Progressive Education.
• The endowed university that yields to the
clamor of the press, of the public, or even of
its graduates, abandons the sole claim that it
has to their support. — JAMES B. CONANT,
president, Harvard University.
• The real aggressor (in war) is the one who
so arranges matters that the other must strike
the first blow or suffer something almost
as unbearable as defeat would be. — PROF.
ROBERT MC£LROY, Oxford University.
• In your devotion to freedom, you appear
to forget too often that liberty is not inevi-
tably accompanied by intelligence and self-
restraint. — .HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM to the In-
ternational Conference on Land Value Tax-
ation, London.
• American democracy is ultimately based
on the ideal of the greatest goods sold to the
greatest number, and that is where the com-
mon man, representing the greatest number
comes in. — LIN YUTAN<. in Hearst's Inter-
national-Cosmopolitan.
• Impatience is a phase of violence. — MA-
HATMA GANDHI in Modern Indian Thought
(Bombay, 1932).
• Knowledge is the only thing that can en-
rich but cannot be taken from one. — IGNACE
JAN PADEREVVSKI, In The Saturday Evening
Post.
• There never yet was a teacher who could
teach lies without his students knowing it- —
LLOYD K. GARRISON, dean, University of Wis-
consin Law School.
• I have often noticed that people redouble
their zeal when they lose sight of their ends.
— DOROTHY THOMPSON, lecturing at the New
School for Social Research, New York.
• I must confess that I have always loved
knowledge only as a means to an end, but
truth I have always loved for its own sake. —
THOMAS MANN, German author, to The Uni-
versity in Exile.
• Short of homicide, a man has practically
no chance of outliving his wife; females, after
attaining a certain age, become almost im-
mortal.— DR. EARNEST A. HOOTON, professor
of anthropology, Harvard University.
• In spite of the democratic idea of equality
of men, proclaimed in the American constitu-
tion as one of its basic principles, there are
probably no other people so interested in indi-
vidual accomplishments . . . and as ready
to honor such individuals in every way as
the Americans. — KURT LEWIN, State Univer-
sity of Iowa.
Elected president for the Seattle meeting in 1938 of the
National Conference of Social Work is Solomon Lowenstein
(above), executive vice-president of the Federation for the Sup-
port of Jewish Philanthropic Societies of New York City. Many
other organizations have the benefit of Mr. Lowenstein's co-
operation, as this magazine well knows, for he is an active
member of the board of directors of Survey Associates, Inc.
(Left) Looking ahead to 1939, Paul Kellogg, editor of The Mid-
monthly Survey and Survey Graphic, has been nominated for
president of the conference meeting that year in Buffalo.
THE SURVEY
fc'«
JUN 17 1937
JUNE 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 6
Social Workers Grope for Unity
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER and HELEN CODY BAKER
GROPING for direction in thought, in action and
in practice on their changing jobs, the social
workers of America assembled in Indianapolis the
last week in May for the sixty-fourth annual meeting of
the National Conference of Social Work. It was a grop-
ing conference in more ways than one. Taxing to the ut-
most every facility of the city, the social workers first
groped their way in steadily mounting heat through noisy
traffic-burdened streets to widely scattered meeting places;
they groped their way through a program which has re-
sisted all efforts at simplification and which seems to grow
every year more crowded and intricate, and finally worked
their way through toward a clarification of their philoso-
phies and objectives. At the end of the week they turned
their faces north, east, south and west with probably
more sense of unity than has resulted from any conference
of recent years.
Physically it was an uncomfortable conference. This
was not the fault of Indianapolis but of "our own in-
ordinate size" which has outgrown the capacity for hos-
pitality of all but a few cities the country over and has
narrowed the choice to a hard-boiled counting of hotel
rooms and meeting places. The physical confusion reg-
istered itself in the temper of the meetings for the first two
days. Delegates were jittery. They gave up trying to find
the meetings they wanted and wandered in and out of any
that were handy. They took no chances on relatively un-
known speakers but crowded in on "big names," and if the
big names did not deliver promptly to their liking, they
crowded out again. It was no reflection on a speaker if
he lost his audience during those first two days; every
speaker suffered the same experience.
For the rest of the week, the conference steadied down
and found itself. Discomforts were accepted and laughed
off; manners, at least reasonable manners, reasserted them-
selves, and the whole big gathering took on form which
opened the way to its substance. There is no denying how-
ever that physically the conference has burst its buttons
and must find some way of making itself more comfortable,
else of its own weight it will fall apart as the representative
sounding board of social work. It might be said here that
the conference officers are fully aware of this situation and
that a special committee has been at work for a year study-
ing the whole subject of the place of the annual meeting
in relation to size and present method of financing. This
committee, which will report next year in Seattle, is con-
sidering various possibilities, among them the selection
of four adequately equipped cities in four different regions,
the conference to rotate among them.
Meantime, lest conference goers become discouraged, as-
surance is given that Seattle is prepared to take care of
any crowd that reasonably can be expected so far from the
center of social work population. Moreover Seattle pro-
poses to drive and drive hard, for a program with enough
nooks and crannies in it to leave room for the expression
of Seattle hospitality and the enjoyment of Seattle scenery.
Buffalo, chosen by the hard-pressed time and place com-
mittee for the 1939 meeting, has two years to prepare
and promises that it will meet the challenge even if it
has to bring in the big lake steamers and operate them as
hotels. "Meet me at the life boat," may be the slogan of
the Buffalo meeting. Stranger things have happened.
MOTIONALLY speaking this was not an exciting
' conference. There was no hoop-la or hero worship, no
sharp controversy to line up social workers in different
camps. And this in spite of the journalistic efforts of the
local newspapers to read political implications into this
utterance or that and to watch hopefully for some one to
"slap back" at a previous speaker. There was plenty of
mental reservation over the premises of various speakers and
plenty of off-stage discussion of what they had to say. But
there was no public slapping back. Social workers have
either gained more tolerance or they realize that, with the
whole broad program of social welfare in the balance in
public opinion and in Congress, public controversy in their
own ranks will do their cause no good.
It is possible too that the conference has lost in emotion
from a change in tempo in what might be described as
the youth movement. The rank-and-file group which estab-
lished its identity at the Kansas City conference in 1934,
and which has been a yeasty element ever since, was this
179
year less concerned with converting the conference body
to its beliefs and policies and more concerned with identify-
ing itself with organized labor. Its daily bulletin was called
Trade Union Notes and its organization was changed to
conform to trade union methods. At its delegate meeting
the National Coordinating Committee of Social Service
Employe Groups — formal name of the rank-and-filers —
voted to dissolve. To quote: "Its organizing function will be
assumed by the public and private agency unions in the
field. Locals of the American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employes throughout the country will
provide centers of information and guidance for public
agency workers as yet unorganized. The Social Service
Employes Unions of New York and Chicago will serve
similarly for workers in private social agencies.
"The responsibility for rank-and-file activities at future
national conferences will be assumed by an elected trade
union committee."
THE programs of this associate group turned,
largely, on broad bases of economic and political
philosophy, good for the head no doubt but not so stirring
to the emotions. It seemed too that its developing leader-
ship, or at least its program timber, was coming more from
its converts from "the old-line crowd" than from youth
itself — chronologically speaking. "Why do they have to
have so many grown-ups?" queried an observer who
frankly missed the "fizz" of the earlier manifestations of
the youth movement.
The youth movement within the conference is not as
clearly defined as it was three years ago. For one thing
the insurgents of Kansas City are three years older; three
sobering years for youth or anyone else. Out of the col-
leges and professional schools into the conference and
social work have come large numbers of young people who
have chosen social work as their calling. They face its
realism and limitations philosophically, and their present
leges and professional schools into the conference and
or even toward professional solidarity than toward per-
sonal professional competence. On the other hand there
was at the conference this year a gathering of zestful
students of schools of social work, who came from near
and far, some of them on the proverbial shoestring, to dis-
cuss means of furthering student organization, locally and
nationally, to participate in shaping the curricula of the
schools. Curiously enough the one formal meeting of this
enthusiastic group was addressed by a professor with the
result, common to most meetings, that there was little or no
time left for the desired discussion.
Because of their obligation to see the conference whole,
these two chroniclers of the annual conclave of social
workers often are asked, "Well, what is the keynote?"
The answer is never easy — is sometimes impossible. If it
had to be put in a word for the Indianapolis meeting, that
word would be "Interdependence." If three words were
allowed, they would be "Integrate or perish." For if the
long and complicated program jelled at any one point, it
was in the realization that no one can go it alone. In every
aspect of conference concern there was evidence that the
barriers that have hedged off public and private areas of
activity, specialized skills, lay and professional concerns,
large and small units of administration, and the rest — are
gradually but definitely going down. They are giving place
to an emerging awareness that no activity, no skill, no
traditional concern will count for much or perhaps even
survive unless it finds its place and adjusts itself to the
furthering of the common cause of security for the mass
of the American people.
This was a public welfare conference, not in any narrow
sense but in the large sense of partnership between gover-
ment and organized social forces. There were differences,
plenty of them, about ways and means, methods and pro-
cedures, emphasis on next steps and so on, but at bottom
a new unity was crystallizing. There was a firm core of
agreement that American life can and must be made more
secure within the framework of American institutions, and
that all the skills developed by social work through the
years must be utilized and directed to that end, with each
giving and taking, learning and adapting.
Right here, it seemed to these two observers, was the
confluence of the main streams of conference thought. To
trace those streams back through the multitude of meetings
News photographs courtesy Indianapolis Star
Unselected sampling of genus social worker, species mixed; often found in this habitat, usually in large masses.
180
THE SURVEY
SOCIAL workers today are not will-
ing to settle down and accept any
permanent or chronic hand-to-mouth life
of dependency for large numbers of
people. Unfortunately instead of efforts
to continue the breaking up of the mass
relief pool, in line with the general trend
in the public assistance program, we had
a fatal turning back of the wheels of
progress when our leaders in Washing-
ton, after an experience of two and a
half years, suddenly announced the end
of federal aid except for work relief,
and the handing back of the complicated
program of general home assistance to
the local authorities. The resources of
the minor local and state governments
could not, of course, carry this load
adequately, especially at the same time
that they were being pressed to develop
the social security program. . . .
The federal government's withdrawal
from the home assistance program led to
the chaos in which we now find our-
selves. The whole relief program has
collapsed in many areas. Competent
workers have been dismissed and those
people who had been our clients are
now nobody's responsibility. "We are
none of us equal to the cause we pro-
fess." If we were, we should have been
able to present the case for this basic
President Edith Abbott
program and make the President and the
Congress see what the social workers of
this country have seen during the past
year — the homes without food and with-
out fuel in bitter weather, children too
hungry to go to school, whole families
without warm clothing and bedding, the
people without provisions for medical
care, and the evictions that have gone on
so relentlessly. If we had been able to
tell our story, we should have had fed-
eral aid again long before this.
DARK AS THE PICTURE is, WE DO NOT
want merely new relief funds. We want
a continued development of new
methods of abolishing relief by making
other and better provisions for those
now in despair of their release. What
we need now are new categories. We
must, for example, find a way to do
something better for that great category
mislabeled unemployable*, a large pro-
portion of whom are really employables
— or near-employables at any rate. This
hard and fast division between the work
relief program and the so-called direct
relief program has been carried too far,
and somewhere there must be an au-
thority with funds to help the large
numbers of men and women now labeled
unemployables, who can, with the right
-kind of help in the way of retraining,
be brought back to employable level.
Distinctions between work relief and
home assistance disappear when we con-
sider the great problem of prevention
and the importance of refusing to ac-
cept relief as a proper way of life for
several millions of our people. . . .
OTHERS CALLING URGENTLY FOR HELP ARE
those in need of special care for in-
validity— those suffering from chronic
illness — who should be cared for on the
basis of sickness and invalidity and not
as families in a general relief pool. . . .
The tragic era called the depression is
now slowly drawing to its close. We have
come out of the Slough of Despond into
the Valley of Decision. We know that
our great objective is the complete
liquidation of the great relief pool. We
are determined that the near-employ-
ables shall be made employables. We
are convinced that our administrators
instead of being urged to give their time
to spreading relief thin, must be allowed
to spend that time constructively in
working out methods of retraining and
finding opportunities of reemployment.
We are concerned about relief, but we
are concerned still more about abolish-
ing the need for relief.
and of papers and addresses is not easy. Certainly many
equally competent observers would not agree as to their
course or their significance. It seemed to us however that
the springs of major conference concern were tapped by
speakers at the general sessions: by Edith Abbott of Chi-
cago in her presidential address, Public Assistance —
Whither Bound ; by Senator Robert F. Wagner of New
York, speaking on Requirements for Permanent Security;
by Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati, on Public Welfare and
Efficiency in Government and by Governor Frank Murphy
of Michigan, on Economic and Social Forces and Industrial
Relations. These were the general topics, broken down into
details as the week wore on.
The conference opened formally on a Sunday night in a
vast bare tabernacle crowded to the doors. This was the
pulpit of a popular radio evangelist, some of whose fol-
lowers had come expecting to hear him. Hence the wail-
ing baby and the barking dog whose lamentations occa-
sionally punctuated Miss Abbott's address but never her
aplomb. With its past presidents in the front row on the
rostrum — including Amos W. Butler (1907) and Edward
T. Devine (1906) — the great gathering was opened with
an invocation by Bishop Joseph E. Ritter of the Roman
Catholic Diocese of Indianapolis, and welcomed by Gov-
ernor M. Clifford Townsend of Indiana. Presiding was
JUNE 1937
Hugh McK. Landon, chairman of the hardworking local
committee on arrangements which filled the rostrum.
The subject of Miss Abbott's address was in a field in
which her forthright views are well known. It was con-
fidently believed that she would let the chips fall where
they would — and she did. With due respect to the begin-
nings of a social security program and revival of the historic
principle of public responsibility for those in need, she as-
serted that "the inadequate foundation of uncertain pauper
relief on which millions of people depend for their only
security, means that we have been building our house upon
the sands." Tracing the development of better care for
special groups — "labeled in the rather grand New York
manner 'categorical relief ' — and the rise of state funds
to supplement inadequate local resources, she pointed out
that there have always remained great numbers in need,
cared for in makeshift ways. She gave credit to the FERA
accomplishment, which "poor as the relief level was, gave
the four million families something better for a time than
some of them had ever known before and better than they
have known in most states since that tragic decision of the
federal administrator and his chief to end this business
of relief" and to turn direct relief back to the communities.
Miss Abbott denied "as no argument at all" the argu-
ment that relief for "unemployables" is traditionally a
Senator Robert F. Wagner
IN the federal social security act is embodied the most
concentrated effort made by any nation to alleviate the
hazards of modern industrial life. Upon that foundation we
have just commenced to build. We must extend the act to
those groups as yet uncovered by its provisions. We must
develop a higher standard of comfort for the old, a wider
margin of protection for the unemployed, a more far-reach-
ing system of aid to the crippled and the destitute. Voca-
tional rehabilitation, a more pressing need now than ever be-
fore, must be pushed forward. Methods must be devised
shortly for removing the risks which the wage earner faces
through ill health. Vistas of human achievement stretch be-
fore us, awaiting only our will to achieve.
Experience has taught us that a program's merits do not
insure its adoption. The future of low rent housing, of social
security, of industrial justice, depends upon the energy, the
determination, and the resourcefulness of those who are
fighting for social progress in America.
state or local responsibility: "Only yesterday work relief
was also traditionally a local program. There is absolutely
no reason in theory or common sense why the federal gov-
ernment should aid the states in work relief and not in the
general home assistance program." But what is needed, she
said,, is not merely more relief but more and new ways of
removing people from the "great relief pool"; more cate-
gories— for the chronically ill for example; retraining for
employables and near-employables; better ways of finding
jobs for those on relief rolls. As to standards of relief :
The greatest difficulty in getting decent standards comes
from the low wages and the inadequate incomes of the fam-
ilies just above the relief level. If the independent wage earn-
ers are not able to earn even the minimum of subsistence,
we shall not be allowed to give adequate care to families
supported by the help of public funds. . . . To find some
way to help that group, who are above the relief level, but
below the minimum standard of living, is the great problem
that the social worker and the community must find a way
to solve together.
But what about funds to finance an adequate public
assistance program, Miss Abbott asked and answered :
It is one of the tragedies of our democracy that taxes are
so often large enough for many of the most urgent needs,
but that these great funds are not used for the people's
benefit. First, there is that enormous section of the federal
taxes that goes for the army and navy, the Veterans' Admin-
istration, the national debt incurred for war purposes, and
all the other expenditures for past and future wars. Then
there is all the money wasted to reward the political friends of
the successful party. I am sure you will agree that this is the
real boondoggling. ... It is like a great sieve letting the tax
collected funds disappear. You know how it is even in the
new social security program which we have been watching so
anxiously. Here, there, and everywhere, political friends of
somebody are appointed as administrators of old age pensions,
administrators of child welfare, administrators of this or that,
and then we are told that some social worker will be ap-
pointed as an assistant to do the work. The money is there,
but it is thrown away. ... Is it unreasonable then to ask
for enough to give the people a little hope of security? At
any rate we are going to ask for more money from taxes, and
some other interests can take less.
Senator Wagner's speech at the second evening meeting —
and incidentally all the general sessions "played to capacity"
— came only a few hours after the Supreme Court deci-
sion upholding major sections of the social security act.
As the sponsor of that act he was given a welcome that
must have been startling to the rafters of the big bleak
tabernacle. Social workers long have looked to Senator
Wagner for leadership in social legislation, and he gave
the conference a lift that lasted through the entire week
by pledging his influence toward the establishment of a
federal department of public welfare in the President's
cabinet and toward child labor legislation, and by staking
his judgment that a form of health insurance "can be
worked out that will be satisfactory both to the public and
the physicians."
On the same program with Senator Wagner was Mayor
Neville Miller of Louisville who told of the welfare prob-
lems created by last January's floods — "our mid-winter
damp spell" — and the community of effort that dealt with
them. He pointed out that in dollars and cents a flood is
less expensive than a full-blown strike. So rosily did he
paint the picture of Louisville's recovery that a flood seemed
almost a blessing.
The following evening, Tuesday night of conference
week, again brought two speakers to the platform, Charles
P. Taft of Cincinnati and Mordecai Johnson, president of
Howard University, Washington, D. C. Mr. Taft, whose
subject was Public Welfare and Efficiency in Government,
was of the opinion that in the whole matter of unemploy-
ment, "the root of our problems today," there can be no
coordinated governmental effort until "the governments,
from Washington to the townships and villages, think of
themselves as partners." More than that, employers, the
unemployed and the run of the mill people of each and
every community must be taken into a partnership of
understanding with all the social agencies, public and pri-
vate, dealing with the problem. "The democratic way is to
educate us all about the facts and then to plan our attack
and mobilize everybody in the community. . . . Educate
the public in plain simple words, not the shop talk that
saves your own time."
Mr. Taft is a firm believer in the function of lay boards,
committees and volunteer workers as interpreters:
If you build up over a period of years real lay committees
and volunteer workers, you won't need to worry about public
relations. They will interpret your work for you and they will
multiply your hands. They are likely to be individualists ;
you can't bawl them out or order them around, and they
are sometimes nuisances ; but they are nevertheless a cross
section of the people of the United States, and you had better
learn to make them your friends and helpers if you really
want social work to play the part it can in healing the wounds
of our machine age.
Dr. Johnson, in a deeply moving address, pleaded for
economic opportunity for Negroes who had suffered dur-
ing the depression out of all proportion to their numbers,
and whose mass migration northward has transferred to
northern cities the so-called race problem :
It should be the policy of every northern city to open em-
ployment to every human being on the basis of ability and
standing. ... It is a serious and solemn obligation on the
182
THE SURVEY
party in power to set the Negro peon and the poor white
tenant slave free economically. If the party does not attempt
that it will be haunted to the day of its inevitable death.
At the final evening meeting of the conference, Gov-
ernor Murphy, fresh from the auto strikes of Michigan,
asserted that the one outstanding failure in efficiency in
American industrial organization has been "in the relation-
ships between the two groups who together run industry —
the employers and the employes." He discussed strikes as
an index of the status of industrial relations, went on rec-
ord as "unable to endorse" proposals for compulsory
arbitration of industrial disputes, and outlined the role of
government as the agent of the public interest in such
disputes. He summarized the role of government as a
mutual friend, intelligent moderator and active participant
with labor and employers in finding a solution and re-
iterated his faith that "the peaceful way is the right way."
Although Harry L. Hopkins, Works Progress adminis-
trator, spoke under the auspices of the American Public
Welfare Association and not of the conference proper, his
address gave to the association's big dinner all the interest
and impact of a general session. Mr. Hopkins' topic was
The Works Program, but he had little to say bearing
directly on it. Rather he argued for "a permanent social
policy, not only to mitigate the evils of unemployment,
but also to provide for those who are unable to find work
inside the economic system." He discussed at some length
the necessity of extending and strengthening the coverage of
the social security act and emphasized his belief that "any
unemployment insurance is a step forward so long as we
realize that it acts only as a first line of defense and must
be supported by other means of helping the unemployed."
Mr. Hopkins studiously ignored all the challenging
gloves that had been cast in his direction during the week
and entered into no discussion whatever of the question
of federal funds for direct relief. This, it might be added,
to the disappointment of those who had anticipated if not
actually hoped for a revival of the controversy over fed-
eral responsibility for relief that ran through the confer-
ence last year in Atlantic City. With the WPA appro-
priation on the floor of Congress and the whole program
in the balance, Mr. Hopkins perhaps had enough argument
on his hands without taking on the social workers.
In attempting to trace major currents of interest through
the conference it is not possible to stick to the divisions of
subject matter as indicated by the section and committee
programs. It didn't work that way. Anyone who expected
to get the full range of discussion of a subject by following
a single section found, long before the end of the week, that
he was missing some pretty important contributions. Take,
for example, the subject of public assistance. Against the
backdrop of Miss Abbott's presidential address that subject,
in one aspect or another, ran through two or three sections
and as many committees.
In considering the "great relief pool", the social workers
at this conference gave less attention to analyzing the size
and content of the pool — all of which they knew too well —
than to proposals for liquidating it and to problems of ad-
ministration, planning and finance, not only of relief but of
all public assistance. Charlotte Carr, executive director of
the New York City Emergency Relief Bureau, set the
stage when she said, "Public relief must now meet the chal-
lenge of contraction. Its expansion was not planned; its
contraction must be, as it is related to a permanent set-up."
Miss Carr reviewed the methods of reducing the relief
JUNE 1937
Administrator Harry L. Hopkins
* COMPREHENSIVE and well integrated program for
1\ the unemployed must be established for the future. It
must include the unemployment insurance program to care
for the short term type [of employment]. I believe that the
unemployed should be given some other form of public
assistance as soon as their unemployment benefits run out,
and that form of public assistance should be work. I believe
that there will always be projects of a worthwhile character
to furnish work for the unemployed. The basic elements in
the proposed remedy are in existence and functioning. There
is need to integrate and strengthen what is being done now in
order that the unemployed will be assured the security they
have the right to expect from their government. . . .
During the past four years we have laid the groundwork
for a system of social economic justice in America. There
remains the greater task of its growth and fulfillment. All
of these things can and will be done because they must be
done. For me, the question is, "How long must we wait r"
pool in New York, and concluded that unemployment in-
surance offers the most impressive prospect.
But the answer to mucli of the relief problem, Miss Carr
holds, is not in security services or in bigger and better
relief, but in better labor conditions and higher wages :
I am tired of hearing of minimum wages. I want to hear of
maximum wages to enable men to care for their own families
and to meet their own needs, including unemployment. As for
large families now on relief — if they are to be removed from
the relief rolls, wages must be higher than any minimum figure
that I have yet heard proposed.
In more than one conference session William Hodson,
commissioner of public welfare in New York City, urged
the proposal, first broached last year, of a presidential com-
mission "to study the baffling national problem called relief
and unemployment." To the American Association of So-
cial Workers he posed some of the questions that are per-
plexing the whole country and said :
The time has come when the President should bring to liis
aid the best brains of the country to study this national prob-
lem. We need such study, not only by government officials but
by the ablest private citizens and recognized experts in the
fields of finance, economics, industry and social work who can
be brought together in a presidential commission along the
general lines outlined in the Murray-Hatch resolution now
pending in the U. S. Senate.
Such a commission will need time and money to undertake
this monumental task of study, analysis and program making.
This is no job for politicians and headline hunters; the solution
of this problem requires the highest type of statesmanship and
its work can be made of inestimable value to the country. It
may take a year or longer to do this job — it will certainly cost
more than $50,000 if the work is properly done, but it will be
worth its weight in gold if it gives the nation a true appraisal
of the situation and some sound leads for future action.
The persistence of the idea that unemployment is a tem-
porary phenomenon calling only for emergency treatment
is a serious handicap to dealing with it, said Joanna C.
Colcord of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, in
discussing provision for the unemployed :
The British know better. They realize that once unemploy-
183
ment seriously attacks an industrialized capitalistic economy
its grip cannot be completely loosened again. The British have
decided to live with unemployment, checking it by all means
possible and cushioning its inroads by means of the social ser-
vices. . . . Eventually we shall reach the same conclusion.
Saying, "Let's keep our feet on the ground and set down
only what might really come to pass," Miss Colcord offered
a three point program which she called "lines of defense":
First would be a combination of health insurance with a
liberalized system of unemployment insurance . . . set up
and financed so that income and outgo will balance, over a pe-
riod of years. This means necessary restrictions upon eligibility
and upon amount and duration of benefit, though none of
these need to be so rigid as in our present laws.
The second line should be a work program to absorb as
many as possible for a second limited period after right to
cash benefit is exhausted. Such a program should be headed
up in a federal department of public works, with funds to
distribute on a grants-in-aid basis to states and through them
to localities.
The third line should be a nation-wide, federally-supervised
and federally-subsidized system of public welfare. Here, for
the first time in the course of his period of unemployment, the
worker would be expected to demonstrate his need for as-
sistance.
When it came to the problems of administering public
assistance there was plenty of testimony from people close
in to the job, but abundant evidence that the whole thing is
a tough proposition and that no one knows all the answers.
Personnel, it was agreed, is the crux of good administra-
tion. Without it the best of programs however adequately
supported will falter and fail. But how to get it is some-
thing else again.
In this connection Lewis Meriam of The Brookings In-
stitution, Washington, D. C. discussed civil service tests
for social work positions, admitting somewhat sadly that,
"No one has yet discovered a method for testing, in the
examination room, those skills in human relationships and
those basic attitudes toward life and work that are the
heart of the profession of social work."
Mr. Meriam looked far ahead in the difficult business of
catching personnel. Agnes Van Driel, of the Bureau of
Public Assistance of the Social Security Board, came closer
in to the current situation when she talked of in-service
training. "It does not work miracles but it helps." Both
of them left unanswered some of the most plaguing ques-
tions. For example : What price high qualifications if the
residence rule rears its ugly head? What chance is there
for in-service training in places where a single worker is
at once the crew and the captain bold ?
The discussion of the administration of public assistance
ran the whole gamut of relationships, federal-state-local,
right down to the man in the street. The problems of the
state, said William Haber, administrator of the Michigan
Emergency Relief Commission, are made more difficult be-
cause of the fact that it is a relatively new agency in wel-
THE positive role of government, if
it is to aid in settling industrial
disputes, should be, first, as a fact-find-
ing agency. It ought to have all the facts
pertinent to each dispute, to make pos-
sible an intelligent public understanding
of the issues in controversy. It should
sift the conflicting evidence, the con-
troversial data, and get at the truth
insofar as it is possible to ascertain the
truth in a conflict involving not only
facts but emotions.
Second, the government's function
ought to be that of a mutual friend and
inlelligent moderator. On its own in-
itiative, or at the request of either or
both parties, it should enter the arena
to aid in the search for those formulas
upon which peace can be built. Nothing
dispels suspicion so quickly as a dis-
cussion of the issues. Nothing makes
for better mutual understanding and
self-respect than the give and take which
inevitably comes from the comparison of
the problems which face both labor and
industry. Fortunately employers have
been changing the attitude that there are
many issues which "are not subject to
discussion." The two parties must ap-
Governor Frank Murphy
preciate their respective responsibilities
and find that meeting ground upon which
mutual confidence and understanding can
be obtained.
THIRD, THE GOVERNMENT MUST ALSO BE
prepared to take its place as an active
participant with labor and employers in
finding a solution. Its attitude must al-
ways be impartial. Its influence must al-
ways be in the direction of moderating
the attitudes and demands of the two
parties. Its view must always be the
public view. Public interest is para-
mount. The government must insist on
peace and orderliness. It must insist on
the building up of mutual self-respect.
To these ends, the public must be repre-
sented by continuing agencies special-
izing in the problems of industrial re-
lations. Government must make avail-
able at all times the most effective pos-
sible kind of mediation agencies. These
must be set up on the basis of each
industry if necessary, as well as on a
geographical basis. Every measure and
method of conciliation and mediation
must be at hand, always in the name of
impartial government.
First and last, we must all remember
that industrial peace is no easy goal. It
will be achieved only when industry and
its leaders realistically face today and
tomorrow and forget the past which
trained them to resist instead of to co-
operate; when labor and its leaders
courageously assume the great respon-
sibilities which are theirs; and when
government exerts a positive, enlight-
ened, and constructive influence. . . .
THE PRESENT SITUATION IN INDUSTRIAL
relations presents an incomparable op-
portunity for enlightened government to
show its worth. The need for sound
judgment and insight is more profound
than at any time in the past, for we
have no successful pattern for dealing
with industrial disputes. A proper ap-
preciation of the forces involved, a
proper understanding of the issues in
the conflict will show that the peaceful
way is the right way. In time, as these
are achieved, the parliament of industry,
embodying the intelligent, peaceful
methods of democracy, can and will re-
sult from self-organization and mutual
self-respect.
184
THE SURVEY
Quartet of wisdom including
(left to right): Benjamin E.
Youngdahl, division director,
Minnesota State Board of
Control ; Richard K. Conant,
secretary, Massachusetts Con-
ference of Social Work; J.
O. Wilson, Citizen's Com-
mittee on Public Welfare,
Madison, Wis.; Ernest W.
Witte, regional representative,
public assistance bureau, So-
cial Security Board.
fare administration and because it has not always, "and
certainly not everywhere" succeeded in getting itself accept-
ed by the counties. "The present turmoil indicates that the
counties expected and hoped that, the relief emergency over,
the state would get out of the picture and permit them to
return to their old ways." In that, the county authorities
are probably going to be disappointed, for the state will
continue to finance the job particularly for the categories
under the social security act, and will scarcely be satisfied
to disburse funds without some control of administration.
Nevertheless, said Mr. Haber, the state administration is
on the spot. It has inherited all the criticisms and all the
local prejudices that have come out of every phase of im-
provised emergency organization. Only in rare instances has
interpretation been such as to cause federal and state con-
cepts of welfare administration to be understood locally:
"The reaction which has taken place in several states
gives tragic evidence of how easily four or five years' whole-
sale experience in building state standards can be over-
thrown in a short time when public good-will has not been
built up, and when understanding is not present."
Mr. Haber held the close attention of his audience in
spite of the fact that the amplifier broke down and hearing
was most difficult. "Listen to this," whispered this observ-
er's seat neighbor, "He's going to town." Effective adminis-
tration without local participation is, he said, well-nigh
impossible except in an emergency "with the imposition of
standards rather than education to standards." Take, for
example, personnel :
The local fear of imported social workers is terrific. . . .
Whether merit systems stick and the communities accept the
workers and their methods depends to some degree upon due
weight being given to the difference in types of problems be-
tween the small and large community.
Even more controversial are the issues involving budgets:
An inflexible, standard formula cannot be enforced. The
local public welfare official who resents the fact that a relief
recipient has coffee in his budget while he, an independent
farmer, does not have sufficient cash income to afford coffee
presents a point of great local effectiveness.
When it comes to the state's function of planning, the
administration is on safer ground, said Mr. Haber. "But
as in all else, planning is useless if it cannot get itself
accepted. . . . The problem of state administrations there-
fore is one of determining what it can afford to postpone
until the educational process of understanding is more ef-
fective, and what are the minimum essentials which must
be secured even at the risk of being imposed."
JUNE 1937
The counties have their own problems in their relation-
ships with local organizations and agencies. These were
put forward for county welfare officials by Arlien Johnson,
now with Washington University, Seattle, and for private
social agencies by Pierce Atwater of the St. Paul Com-
munity Chest. Neither one of them disagreed with Mr.
Haber's emphasis on the necessity for local understanding
and participation. "Successful social planning for the fu-
ture," said Mr. Atwater, "must have its roots in local
soil, be built around local needs and spring out of the con-
sciousness of a local citizenship."
Both Miss Johnson and Mr. Atwater saw the device of
the community council as most promising for future plan-
ning, on a county or even a regional basis, drawing in every
aspect of local organization and steadily widening its circle
of interpretation. The important point, Miss Johnson be-
lieves, is "to individualize the county and to start where
it is."
THE matter of relationships came out clearly in the dis-
cussion of financing public assistance with evidence of
a lot of hard sober thinking and less tendency than in some
other conferences for social workers to see the desired end
and to brush over the practical means of reaching it. But
the net result was largely an analysis of the dilemmas facing
state and local units, rather than solutions. The whole
situation, all the speakers agreed, is filled with paradoxes
and contradictions, yet "it remains the most acute problem
that faces government. No welfare program can work satis-
factorily until a solution is found."
Pierce Atwater of St. Paul could find no answer outside
of a complete reorganization in the levying of taxes and a
changed orientation in the conception of what constitutes
relative priority of expenditure in all tax budgets.
Roy Blough, professor of economics at the University of
Cincinnati, had no answers either, but analyzed the prob-
lems of public policy involved and urged that their solution
be sought by means of research and not emotion. He posed
and discussed three questions:
Hflw much public assistance can. we .afford?. How should the
financial burden be divided among the federal, state and local
governmental units? When the federal government or the
states contribute to relief financing through grants-in-aid should
the grants be fixed or variable percentages?
Almost as old as the conference itself, the question of the
expenditure of public funds by private agencies apparently
will not down. While it may have been settled in principle,
its vestigial remains in practice offer a footing for various
185
hard pressed private agencies and public officials to revive
proposals for subsidies of public funds to private undertak-
ings. Kenneth L. M. Pray, secretary of the Pennsylvania
Committee on Public Assistance and Relief (the Goodrich
committee), whose own state has been "conspicuous for its
consistent adherence to the lump sum subsidy plan of
meeting certain of its public responsibilities," discussed the
question and the principles of sound public administrative
policy that point to the answer.
Public service supported by public funds must be equally
accessible and available to all those in need of the services,
he said, but if this principle is to prevail it is obvious that
the selection of the particular services that are to have this
large coverage must be made, not at random, but with
reference to specific factors of expediency, logically ana-
lyzed and appraised. From this follows the principle of :
. . . direct and specific responsibility of public officers for the
execution of public policies and the administration of public
funds. . . . Only by strict accountability of public officers for
administrative action can intelligent social purpose be clarified
and brought to intelligent realization.
IF this report of the stream of conference concern which
we have called public assistance is over long, and it is,
it is because it caught and held the attention of so many of
the conference delegates. It might be added that, long as it
is, this account has done scant justice to the length, breadth
and thickness of the whole discussion and has passed over
many contributions quite as notable as the ones quoted.
In the stream which we have called permanent security,
projected against Senator Wagner's address to the confer-
ence body, there was less concern evident this year than
last over problems of administration and more over the
extension of the social security act. Social workers have
taken seriously the statement that the act is a "good be-
ginning" and are pushing for its prompt extension.
The most immediate push seems to be for health and
medical service — health insurance if you like. There was no
argument as to the need of medical care for the relief pop-
ulation or for the great numbers of people who now and in
the future look to the social security services for protection
against dependency. Of the persons now employed on work
projects, said Josephine C. Brown, administrative assistant
of WPA, more than a fifth have serious physical or mental
disabilities. Their security wages leave nothing for even
emergency medical and dental services. A permanent pro-
gram of care should serve not only these people but all
those receiving any local or state aid, and those whose in-
come does not provide the minimum cost of adequate medi-
cal care in addition to a reasonable subsistence compatible
with decency and health: "The program should be con-
sidered one of medical service, not relief, and should be an
integral part of the federal social security provisions."
The most obvious gap which social workers seem to see
in the security system as it is operating at present is in
relation to invalidity — chronic illness and incapacity. The
subject bobbed up in many meetings with pretty general
agreement that this must be the next step.
The conference, all except the newest newcomers, was
already aware of the stand of John A. Kingsbury of New
York, former director of the Milbank Fund, in the matter
of health insurance. None the less it savored to the full and
heartily applauded his forthright and vigorous presentation :
We now have public medicine in the care of the insane, the
mental defective and the tuberculous. It is not a question of
whether we shall have public medicine but whether we shall
have more of it. ... A comprehensive national health program
should be designed not only to protect all the people from con-
tagious disease, to promote their health and vitality, to give
special protection to mothers and children, but also to furnish
protection against wage loss and to make good medical service
available to all the people. We are making progress both in
the direction of public medicine and public health service. But
our progress is too slow. ... I am convinced that we can
meet the needs which confront us, and do this within the near
future, only through a comprehensive national health program
which includes compulsory health insurance, supervised and
subsidized by the federal government. . . .
This Year and Next
REGISTRATION at the 1937 conference reached an all-
time high of 6788, with an estimated additional 2000
persons in attendance who more or less bootlegged the meet-
ings without the formality of registration. The previous
record of 6670 was made last year in Atlantic City.
In addition to the conference proper, with its five sections
and seven special committees, fifty-one associate and special
groups conducted meetings of their own during the week.
At the headquarters in Murat Temple fifty-one national
social agencies maintained daily consultation services and
sixteen additional agencies had exhibits and headquarters.
The program, ninety-three closely printed pages, listed a
total of 306 different meetings from Friday, May 21, when
the National Probation Association opened the ball, to
Saturday, May 29, when the 1937 conference closed. To this
total could be added probably another fifty called-on-the-
spot meetings of school alumni, state delegations and so on.
Speakers, discussion leaders and presiding officers at the pro-
grammed meetings numbered 600, of whom sixty-nine ap-
peared twice; eleven, three times; and two, Katharine
Lenroot of Washington and Bleecker Marquette of Cin-
cinnati, four times.
Officers elected for the 1938 meeting to be held in Seattle
June 26 to July 2 are: president, Solomon Lowenstein, New
York; vice-presidents, Grace L. Coyle, Cleveland; Forrester
B. Washington, Atlanta; Ruth Fitz Simons, Olympia, Wash.
Chairmen of sections: Social Case Work, C. W. Areson,
New York; Social Group Work, Louis Kraft, New York;
Community Organization, Charles C. Stillman, Columbus,
Ohio; Social Action, Fred K. Hoehler, Chicago. The sec-
tion on Public Welfare Administration did not report.
The 1939 Conference will be held in Buffalo, N. Y.
Officers nominated for that year, to be elected at Seattle,
are: president, Paul Kellogg, New York; vice-presidents.
Edward L. Ryerson, Jr., Chicago; Ida M. Cannon, Boston;
Jane M. Hoey, Washington.
186
THE SURVEY
Mary E. McChristie, referee, Cincinnati court of
domestic relations and Albert B. Carter, Massa-
chusetts Commissioner of Probation, enjoy a
two-way conference.
Community Chesters Louise Clevenger of St. Paul
and C. Whit Pfeiffer of Kansas City, see the
cheerful side of things.
All through the conference program ran urgence for the
extension of the security services: for easing the require-
ments for old age assistance and providing the aged with
social and medical service; for widening the scope of assist-
ance to children ; for extending unemployment compensa-
tion to groups not now protected, notably farm laborers,
domestics and social workers.
To all of this came advice from Arthur J. Altmeyer,
chairman of the Social Security Board, to "Go slow," and
from Ewan Clague, of the board's division of research, to
study the figures and, in effect, to masticate what we have
before we bite off any more.
The Social Security Board is as aware as anyone else,
said Mr. Altmeyer, that the real job of providing social
security for the people of this country still remains to be
done. But, he said :
"Since we are still in the pioneer stages of this great enter-
prise, it is sound policy to make haste slowly. . . . The board
definitely favors the liberalization of existing provisions in-
sofar as our present experience and present circumstances
seem to warrant. ... It believes profoundly that no pro-
gram of social legislation is ever complete or final ; that in
social legislation to 'finish' would be to fail."
Mr. Clague is one of those people who speak from
cryptic notes and hence cannot often be quoted directly.
But of excluded groups, he said in effect: You have to ex-
clude them because it would be impossible or at least im-
practical at the present time to administer the law for
them. When they are self-employed you can't tax the em-
ployer and the law provides for employer contributions.
It is almost impossible to tax the farm laborer because he
is so often a seasonal migrant. Household employes —
laundresses, gardeners and the like — often have six to a
dozen employers. Imagine the bookkeeping! Non-profit
agencies in most cases are now tax exempt; if you levy a
tax on them for this purpose you let down the gates for
all kinds of taxes. And consider our present volume —
twenty-seven million applications. And in June all the
boys and girls leaving school and going to work will be
coming in. By 1940 we shall be covering thirty-three mil-
lion persons; by 1950 fifty million.
JUNE 1937
While some of Mr. Clague's hearers differed with his
implication that some things are too hard to be tackled,
many more found his arguments clear and understandable
and left with the realization that in a country of some 130
million people it is one thing to know what ought to be
done for all of them and something else to find practical
ways of doing it.
THE stream of conference interest which we have called
public relations was fed by that part of Mr. Taft's
address which dealt with community partnership and vol-
unteer interpretation. It was fed by discussions in every
wing of the big gathering — discussions of public attitudes
toward social work and social workers, relationships be-
tween public and private agencies, board members and
staffs, professionals and volunteers — as those relationships
get back to the public and create public opinion. Interpre-
tation, too, came in as a large tributary.
One trouble with public understanding of social work,
said Benjamin E. Youngdahl of the Minnesota State Board
of Control, is that to the public "social work is social work"
while to social workers it is an aggregate of activities each
of which deals with its own field, pleads its own special
cause and emphasizes its own restricted interests. He urged
social workers to come together on a unified platform if
they hope to educate their communities to the programs
they propose:
There is needed in each state one representative social work
group that can speak for social work on all points. This does
not mean that agencies would lose their identities but that a
coordinating group would work out and formulate a body of
agreement on what social work is, what it does and what it
believes. . . . An adolescent profession comes of age by finding
itself and being accepted by the public. We must bear in mind
that the sheltered existence and phenomenal success of some
private agencies is not public acceptance in the wide field which
has opened to social work during the last five years.
The constant discussion of the role of public and private
agencies does social work as a whole little good, said Sidney
Hollander long associated with both camps in Baltimore.
For behind all the vast machinery of organization and the
187
Veteran conference-goers Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, University
of Chicago; Katharine F. Lenroot, U. S. Children's Bureau, and
Wilfred S. Reynolds, Chicago Council of Social Agencies.
spate of discussion, the layman, if he looks hard enough, sees
the client for whom it all exists:
We are told that the public agency supports the client and
the private agency refines him, but when we really look at him
we see that often he hasn't enough food, is miserably housed,
wears clothes that would embarrass a scarecrow and as for
refinement, he lacks even the minimum decencies of life. And
we laymen wonder what all the pother is about.
Mr. Hollander, whose good natured frankness met with
hilarious appreciation, is convinced that public and private
agencies must get together in their claims as well as in their
programs if the public is not to make their divergences an
excuse for "passing the buck."
That some social workers are anxious to clarify the pub-
lic-private relationship and are striving to do so was indi-
cated by a discussion at a meeting of the Family Welfare
Association of America. Summing up, it appeared that this
group held that the trend in relationships should assume
that the public agency will render a rounded case work
service to the economically dependent group, a service
which the private agency should help to develop. The pri-
vate agency would render service to families at a marginal
economic level, ineligible for public relief; would supply
financial aid in forms not available from the public depart-
ment ; and would provide service to economically independ-
ent families requesting it, possibly on a fee basis.
IT is a conference tradition that its president-elect should
address the big annual luncheon of the Child Wel-
fare League of America. Last year it was Edith Abbott ; this
year it was Solomon Lowenstein of New York who spoke,
as a social worker, on participation in the life of the com-
munity. Social workers, he said, are all citizens and their
only special position is because of their expert knowledge in
a particular phase of community life. By participating in
community life in all its phases, by doing their job well and
letting their doing be known, they become interpreters of
their profession. "We must be evangelists preaching a posi-
tive gospel, opposing ignorance, selfishness, forgetfulness."
The Social Work Publicity Council, which was battling
for intelligent interpretation long before most social agen-
cies knew that they needed it, was top o' the heap this year
with its meetings crowded and its exhibits of material in de-
mand from morning till night. For, as it came out in many
meetings, it is one thing to know that public relations are
not too good and it is another to know how to make them
better, how to analyze difficulties, to evaluate approaches,
to use effectively all the ways there are to public under-
standing. Apparently social workers, if this conference was
a measure, realize that they must have these skills.
In the stream of conference interest that converged on
industrial problems, inter-relationships were in the middle
of the current : the relationship of government and labor, as
visioned by Governor Murphy; of the worker and the job;
the worker and modern production methods; organized
labor and modern industrial society and so on.
The suggestion that workers should be geared to jobs
drew fire from Nels Anderson, director of labor relations
of the WPA, who queried sharply :
What about gearing jobs to workers? Are we to assume
that jobs exist if only the workers can be persuaded or coerced
or adjusted to take them? I am afraid that such a conception
lingers too frequently in the subconscious of social work think-
ing as it does in the conscious thinking of industrial leaders.
Mr. Anderson asserted that industrial leaders who de-
mand a census of the unemployed would be more convincing
if they also demanded a survey of employment possibilities:
What can the big industrial leaders promise to the millions
who have to depend on public work to live? What encourage-
ment can they give the youth who have never had a chance?
Do these critics of public work know what private employ-
ment has to offer next season or next year? What kind of
workers will be needed or where needed?
I have no faith in these schemes for gearing the workers to
private jobs that do not exist. ... It is not enough to manipu-
late the jobless men; the situation must also be manipulated.
In commenting on the relationship of government and
labor, Edwin S. Smith of the National Labor Relations
Board, urged that federal and state governments keep
legislative hands off organized labor's right to strike and
instead turn their attention to encouraging and protecting
the unionization of labor:
When industries are well organized strikes are compara-
tively rare, although the threat either spoken or understood
of a withdrawal of labor power by strong unions is always
an important factor in keeping up wages. A weak union can
marshal no such respect. If a union is protected by govern-
ment in its efforts to organize it will soon grow strong enough
to command the necessary influence with the employer. In the
meantime minimum wage legislation to prevent employer ex-
ploitation is highly desirable, serving among other things to
raise competition to a level of decency. . . .
If the present strike epidemic seems to demand more media-
tion let this be accomplished by strengthening the conciliation
service of the national and state labor departments. Such sim-
ple means of governmental help leave labor free to work out
its economic destiny without being hampered and possibly
hamstrung by elaborate statutory and administrative red tape
and by delay which saps its strength.
Discussing the social significance to Negroes of recent
labor developments, T. Arnold Hill of the National Urban
League, more or less warned trade unions that Negroes did
not mean to be excluded from the benefits of unionism:
There is now a greater faith among Negroes in the efficiency
and value of trade unionism and the certainty that their chance
of securing working conditions comparable with those of
whites are slight unless they and their fellow white workers
realize the oneness of their common cause and fight valiantly
to realize it. Convinced in this position there is the determina-
tion to follow the organized pressure techniques — the Ameri-
can pattern of securing opportunity: pressure from within and
without the trade union movement to the end that Negroes
will be excluded neither from work nor from membership in
the unions because of the prejudiced attitude of recalcitrant
labor union organizations.
188
THE SURVEY
The real heroine of this conference was Mary Van
Kleeck of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York, who
not only addressed two large meetings and presided at a
third, but saved the day for Mary Anderson, chairman of
the Social Action Division, by agreeing to speak in place
of Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, who was unable to
fulfill her engagement. With only overnight notice Miss
Van Kleeck spoke brilliantly and without notes for almost
an hour. In her first address of the week, Recent Trends in
Standards of Living, given at a meeting of the National
Coordinating Committee of Social Service Employe Groups,
Miss Van Kleeck said :
Standards of living have for the social worker the same
significance as the health of the population has for the physi-
cian. ... It is not enough for social workers today to be con-
cerned with the problem of relief. It is important, of course, to
insist that the federal government shall measure up to its
responsibility for meeting present needs. . . . But beyond the
problem . . . social workers must develop a program for
raising standards of living by increasing control over natural
resources ; by insisting upon governmental expenditures for
housing and for public works ; and by increasing also the pub-
lic expenditures for education and public health.
IN her second address, The Social Programs of Eco-
nomic and Political Organizations of Labor, Miss
Van Kleeck said:
The situation may be summed up by saying that the energies
of the labor movement are now concentrated upon economic
organization, but with recognition of the fact that the very
right to exist has been won only by growing political strength.
As economic gains are won and consolidated by the new
unions a new social program will be formulated, which may
be expected to arise out of the needs of the masses.
For the social work program this development will have
profound implications. Social work will have a new and con-
structive role to perform in perfecting plans to meet the needs
of the people as interpreted by the workers. Social work will
concern itself with legislation and governmental administra-
tion. It may be predicted that social workers will be recruited
from the labor movement. New content and methods of train-
ing will be developed both for social workers and for labor
leadership. Both must be trained to build a new structure for
the fulfillment of an adequate social program.
In her third address, substituting for Secretary Perkins,
Miss Van Kleeck discussed what the International Labor
Office may mean to American labor.
These two chroniclers are well aware that there were
in the conference many wide currents and deep pools of
interest that do not fall neatly into the main streams.
There was clearly evident, for example, a mounting in-
terest in group work, its philosophy, relationships and meth-
ods, which centered in the Group Work Section of the
conference, the meetings of which had a much larger atten-
dance than in any previous year. The discussions revealed,
among many other things, a concern for fruitful coopera-
tion with public schools and a reaching for what progressive
education has to give to this area of social work. "The
group workers are knocking on the schoolroom doors," said
one observer, "and at least some of the school men have
put 'Welcome' on the mat."
The group workers steadfastly refuse to be jelled into
any hard and fast mold of methodology but none the less
they are earnestly striving to analyze their own problems,
of which group leadership is one. Here Grace L. Elliott of
New York contributed a paper which many people con-
sidered outstanding in the whole conference program. What
kind of a leader should a group have, she asked — and, in
summary, answered :
Somebody who has a life of his own, and can share it. "To
be called is more dangerous than to be chosen."
Somebody who believes in himself. If you don't you are too
heavy a burden on your neighbor.
Somebody who is "Free, in thought, convictions and emo-
tions."
Somebody whose goals, standards and ideals are rooted in
himself; who lives and acts by his own convictions.
Somebody willing to leave other people free to follow their
own convictions.
Somebody who has enthusiasm, faith in youth, imagination,
sympathy; can see the differences between symptoms, causes
and results; can distinguish between individual and cultural
problems; has outgrown his own childish or infantile reactions;
can honestly budget his own time; can delegate responsibility.
Somebody who recognizes that there are no short cuts to
life and that neither revolution nor dictatorship will transform
society; who lives in the present, and has a dynamic, though
not necessarily orthodox, religious faith.
And, she added, "No old maids, male or female, need
apply."
The group workers are intent on cooperating with each
other to improve their own skill, in availing themselves of
the best guidance that can be found in recent community
and agency studies and in following experiments in group
life adapted to various age, minority/ racial, religious and
rural groups, and to various aims — education, recreation,
social change and so on. Last, but far from least, they are
concerned with the common social objectives of education,
religion and social work.
Bearing on this last point, was a paper by Rabbi James
G. Heller of Cincinnati, which some people regarded as
the high spot of the conference, not only for its breadth and
depth of philosophy but for its organization and good
writing — a commentary perhaps on certain other kinds of
conference writing. It would not be fair to Rabbi Heller —
perhaps it isn't fair to anyone — to lift out any one "chunk"
of his closely organized paper in which he traced the rea-
sons why education, religion and social work got themselves
organized in different institutions but still remain aspects
of a common human task. Concluding, he said :
The task of society is one. Out of the matrix of the past
have emerged specialized functions, but all of them, deeply
enough considered, still represent one task, one ideal, one in-
terpretation of the world. They may diverge at times, but the
exigencies of their own labors and their own struggles to think
Last speaker of
the conference
was Florence E.
Allen of Cleve-
land, judge of
the U. S. Circuit
Court of Ap-
peals. Peace by
law, she said,
offers a vast field
of adventure in
understanding
individ ually,
nationally and
internationally.
JUNE 1937
189
Incoming president Solomon Lowenstein talks over the confer-
ence with outgoing president Edith Abbott.
their way through will cause them to converge again. Mankind
is one and its pilgrimage has been one final goal.
Rabbi Heller's paper was welcomed by his hearers as
"clarifying to confusion." Another paper which' won the same
appreciative comment was given by Eduard C. Lindeman of
New York in the Community Organization Section.
"This," said a not-so-easily stirred delegate as he came
away from the meeting, "was worth coming for. It did
something for me. It showed me the reasonableness of huge
bureaucracies due to our urban set-ups, and the wholesome-
ness of pressure groups to give diversity and freedom. The
balance between the weight at the top and the thrust from
below is democracy, the middle way between fascism and
communism."
To Lea D. Taylor of Chicago Commons, readers of
The Survey are indebted for the following impressions
of Mr. Lindeman's observations on New Patterns of
Community Organization :
Complete integration means decay. Vitality lies in diversity
and freedom. Social action from primary groups challenges
secondary groups, national and state. Pressure groups are a
good American habit. They force self analysis on our ad-
ministrators, and have a wholesome influence on legislation.
The CIO type of organization has brought a "new audacity"
into the picture. This is also good, making for freedom and
diversity. But look out for the reactionaries. There is always
resistance to new freedoms. Among these reactionary forces
we find many social agencies jealous of their integrity, which
is threatened by any change. Coordinating committees are
good for these vested interests in social work, and keep them
from going dead on us. The professional coordinator who
comes in from outside can't do much but a live coordinating
council, composed of laymen, citizens and social workers can
do a lot. Long time planning is better than a flash in the
pan of spectacular activity. What we need is not high-powered
individual leadership, but leadership by groups.
THERE was in this conference less ebullience than last
year over the techniques of psychiatric case work — no
one knew why. Meetings in the social case work section
were large and eager, but there was no such stampede of
young and old as was seen at Atlantic City. Case workers,
following the ground swell recently evident among them,
turned their attention largely to the implications of cultural
factors in the lives of their clients, and to methods of utiliz-
ing an understanding of cultures in the practice of case
work; whether with families, children, or "adolescents who
have run afoul of the law."
The treatment and prevention of crime occupied a large
area of conference interest, beginning in the meetings of the
National Probation Association and heading up in the Com-
mittee on Social Treatment of the Adult Offender. This
committee, led by Sanford Bates now of the Boys' Clubs of
America, Inc., had an uncommonly well-organized and co-
hesive program. It presented, at its first session, three basic
papers: The Arrested Offender, by Nina Kinsella of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons; The Incarcerated Offender, by
Morris N. Winslow of the State Prison Colony, Norfolk,
Mass., and The Paroled Offender, by Winthrop D. Lane
of the New Jersey Juvenile Delinquency Commission.
These papers stated the problem and laid the ground-
work for six group discussions which went on fast and
furiously for a whole day, with the various findings later
summarized at a single large meeting. The gist was:
Jails: They cannot be made a factor in treatment. They
should be abolished and regional detention places set up.
Probation Selection: The essence of selection is treatability.
Each case should have study and diagnosis covering mental
and emotional factors, environment and the attitude of the
offender and of society. If diagnosis is followed by a well con-
sidered plan of treatment "you are off to a good start."
The Staff Approach in Institutional Treatment: An inmate
may be treated by the staff approach, which means that it is
an inside job, or by the case work unit approach, which means
that an outside case work agency takes responsibility. The
advantage of the staff approach is that it utilizes all of the
staff and makes the treatment program an integral part of the
institution.
The Place of the Social Worker in a Penal and Correctional
Institution: A social worker who knows how to get material,
organize and use it, can "see the offender whole," bring all the
facilities of the institution to him, and "help to socialize the
guards and wardens" is needed. But the social workers have
not as yet much authority in institutions, and most of them find
this hard to take. They need to learn more about law and
institutional precedent.
Preparation for Parole and Supervision of Parolees: Prepa-
ration begins at the time of commitment and continues during
the period of incarceration with the institution functioning in
cooperation with a community agency to improve the inmate's
family and social milieu before his release. If parole officers
could relax control and turn professional problems over to
social workers, then supervise without coercion, all things
would work together for good — especially if the offender
could "participate in the planning of his parole program."
Parole Selection: Parole is sound, but the public is not "sold
on it." It should be available for all offenders, and the indeter-
minate sentence is the answer. Prediction tables fall short of
the practical use that was hoped for them. Prisons should be
encouraged, but not compelled to use them.
Removed from the discussions of the "crimers" but close-
ly related in content was the paper, The Emotional Back-
ground of Delinquency, given by Dr. Franz Alexander of
the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, at the packed and
jammed dinner meeting of the American Association of Psy-
chiatric Social Workers. In concluding his talk, for notes
on which Survey readers are indebted to Martha Wood of
Evanston, 111., Dr. Alexander anticipated the surprise of
the audience at hearing a psychoanalyst speak on sociological
phenomena. As other fields have shifted emphasis from treat-
ment to prevention, psychiatry and psychoanalysis have recog-
nized that the focus of attack on crime lies not in detection
and individual therapy, but in recognition and education as
to the mass phenomena.
Research in criminology for the purpose of establishing
types and characteristics has produced few, if any, valid
190
THE SURVEY
generalizations. Dr. Alexander endorses only the discovery
that the principle of relativity permeates this field. Specifi-
cally, today we worship at the altar of the spectacular, the
virile, the independent. Therefore the fundamentally timid,
passive, receptive souls must over-compensate to achieve
recognition and this (because socially acceptable success is
possible for only the few) most often adds up to produce
the headlined criminal. Historically we know that group
standards always lag behind existing social conditions; the
remedy would seem to lie in hastening the natural process
of adjustment between the two by means of education.
Some day these two reporters hope to be able to write a
conference story that is different, that will concern itself
first, and perhaps last, with the many things that happen on
the rim of the big program, in meetings which hold pay ore
that we have never been able to mine.
Notable this year was the ferment in the Church Con-
ference of Social Work in relation to social action. Here
the Rev. James Myers, of the Federal Council of Churches,
warned that the church is in danger of becoming fettered
and bound by capitalism. "While the church cannot identify
itself with any 'ism' it should be understood clearly that
capitalism is also an 'ism.' . . . The church must judge all
social and economic systems by their effect on human life,
and should support all the forces seeking to abolish poverty,
slums, unemployment and war, and seeking to maintain the
institutions of political democracy, to develop economic
democracy and to assure world peace."
In the various meetings under the wing of Community
Chests and Councils, Inc. there was pronounced interest in
the subject of community planning, but, commented one of
the "chesters," "not nearly enough. Financing still has the
right of way on our track." At a panel meeting the trouble-
some question of employe contributions, particularly in rela-
tion to labor organization, was brought out into the open by
R. G. Corwin, business man of Dayton, who urged the
chest men to face up to the criticisms that past and present
practices have engendered. There was lively discussion, but
on the whole an unwillingness to admit that "we have any
trouble in our town."
Because any meeting that cuts down the number of meet-
ings at the conference is to be cheered a word must be said
here for the one in which nine agencies concerned in one
way or another with the immigrant and his problem joined
forces in a program which posed the question, Who Shall
Inherit America? In a nutshell the answer seemed to be:
The immigrant — for aren't we all?
IT was a sober, hard-working, long-suffering conference,
full of young people looking for light and leading, but
in the main led by veterans full of experience. It was not
exciting, but it was "sound." It was not gay. The Confer-
ence Follies, After Hours, put on by the Social Work Pub-
licity Council, drew a packed house, and gathered in more
laughs than all the rest of the week's program put together.
The reception tendered to President Edith Abbott by the
Indianapolis Committee on Arrangements afforded a wel-
come opportunity for old timers to congratulate her on her
leadership of the conference, and for newcomers to savor the
personality of a woman whose contribution to their pro-
fession, and indeed to her time, is well known to them.
On the side of its content this conference indicated that
social workers are approaching a new unity of thought and
purpose. On the side of its organization it indicated that
"something must be done about it," and that that something
— whether a new means of financing, a break up into
regional conferences, a simplification of program by divorc-
ing associate groups — must be done promptly if the confer-
ence, the "front" of social work, is not to lose prestige both
within itself and without.
"Why can't we always go to Atlantic City?" moaned a
delegate who preferred sand in her shoes to blistered heels.
One answer is Seattle in 1938; another is Buffalo in 1939.
After that, time and the conference will tell.
For the Children of Spain
AMASS meeting filled the Egyptian Room of the Murat
Temple of Indianapolis May 26, under call of the So-
cial Workers Committee of the Medical Bureau to Aid
Spanish Democracy and $1500 was raised for its drive for
$15,000. Dr. Fernando de los Rios, Spanish Ambassador, was
the chief speaker, Harald H. Lund opened the meeting,
Peter Cassius presided, and Dr. Pedro Villa Fernandez spoke.
Following a vivid presentment of conditions by Anna Louise
Strong, and on motion of John A. Kingsbury, the weight of
the meeting was thrown behind a new move in behalf of
Spanish children "regardless of battle lines." To quote:
"As social workers . . . we cannot ignore the cry of hun-
dreds of thousands of children, enduring the perils of hunger
and war in Spain. . . .
"We recall with pride the world-wide child saving work
of America, during the past two decades, of Belgian and
Serbian children from the aftermath of war, of German chil-
dren from the results of food blockade, of Russian children
from the Volga famine, of Japanese children from the great
earthquake, of Chinese children in recurrent famines and
floods.
"We note that America's tremendous genius for humani-
tarian endeavor, so accomplished in the past in breaking
barriers, has not yet found a way to give adequate help to
the children of Spain. For, while recognizing all existing
efforts in this direction, we find them totally incommensurate
with America's great tradition of saving life.
"We, therefore, call upon the leaders of this country in all
walks of life to establish a National Joint Committee for
Spanish children, which will initiate a large nation-wide
drive for funds and will administer these funds through
existing agencies for the benefit of children regardless of
battle lines. . . .
"We call upon other American organizations actually ad-
ministering relief in Spain and upon leading social workers
and other citizens to organize the Joint Committee for Span-
ish Children in answer to the cries of the hungry, sick, home-
less and parentless children of Spain!"
JUNE 1937
191
The Common Welfare
Next Steps in Federal Relief
THE panel discussion on federal relief, carried over a
nation-wide hook-up by the N.B.C. from Indianapolis,
served somewhat the same purpose as one of those inven-
tions of the radio engineers to strip transmission of its
blur. For the National Conference of Social Work was
itself wrestling with this issue which had come to a head
that week in Washington. Taxpayers were calling on the
federal government to turn full responsibility back to states
and localities. WPA workers in New York were staging
a one-day stoppage against the inadequacy of the admin-
istration's bill. And drives were under way in the lower
house of Congress to earmark big chunks of its billion and
a half dollars, gouging out a third of the assurance it held
of work and wages for 1,625,000 persons.
The panel brought together executives shouldering heavy
responsibilities, public and private: the director of the Amer-
ican Public Welfare Association, an assistant administrator
of the WPA, the director of public assistance of the Social
Security Board, the executive vice-chairman of the Cin-
cinnati Community Chest, and the commissioner of public
welfare of New York. Listeners-in could not fail to get
the consensus of their testimony that there is a great over-
hanging bulk of unemployment today which is still an un-
met charge on the conscience of the American people.
True, employment has picked up, but private enter-
prise falls inescapably short of supplying enough work to
go around. Certain cities fly the flag of returned prosperity ;
public welfare departments are gaining ground; but in
some states, in parts of many if not most states, local relief
is a travesty, surplus food commodities are often turned to
as a meager barrier against starvation, and existence dips
so low that it is an indictment of us all.
Our new systems of old age insurance and employment
compensation were upheld by the Supreme Court while the
conference was in session. We can build on them, recast
them where they are weak, extend them to new groups,
expand them to cover sickness and invalidity — but their
ultimate protection does not reach the mass need of today.
Again, the public assistance provisions of the social
security act are bringing succor to well toward two mil-
lion people; but what of the others who do not fall in its
categories? They must look elsewhere for help.
The WPA has been one of the few distinctive Amer-
ican contributions to the strategy of righting unemployment
— going beyond public works in projects that have found
use for back muscles and old craftsmanships, and also for
the new skills and arts and aptitudes we like to think of
as evidences of American progress. But any billion and a
half cannot be stretched to cover all the unemployed now
rated as employable; much less those uncounted numbers
whom we should bring back into the working stream
through physical and vocational rehabilitation ; to say
nothing of the vast remainder on relief — or in need of it.
With this estimate of the situation it was significant
that all members of the panel were for the pending WPA
appropriation ; and that almost with equal unanimity they
held that federal revenues, through grants-in-aid, should
underpin the states in meeting these grueling needs so long
as we fail to prevent them. The majority recommended a
presidential commission to map out the basic features of
our future program.
Clearly ground was broken long since by the White
House and the federal relief administration for the con-
ception of national responsibility toward unemployment.
A presidential commission will make for awareness and
sound planning. But if the social workers of the country are
to help secure action by Congress on this new extension of
direct federal relief they will have to get the need for it
over to representatives and senators from their own dis-
tricts. That is where their conviction can count.
Citizens' Job
OTIRRED by recent revelations of the extent and con-
^~s volutions of New York's "crime system," startled
citizens have come together under the leadership of Harry
F. Guggenheim in a new Citizens Committee on the Con-
trol of Crime which will study not the causes of crime
but crime itself and the functioning in relation to it of the
instrumentalities of criminal law. The committee proposes
to cooperate with Thomas E. Dewey, special prosecutor,
to supplement his efforts and consolidate his gains in break-
ing up the dark labyrinth of crime and racketeering. More
than that it is prepared, "calmly and unintermittently over
a long period of time, step by step," to accumulate informa-
tion through systematic observation and tabulation of the
work of the police, the district attorneys and the courts,
which will reveal the strength and consistency of the under-
world, the trend in crime and the measure and methods of
law enforcement. Its indices will afford, it believes, a run-
ning record of crime conditions throughout the city, the
recurrent appearances of professional or near-professional
criminals, the incidence of various types of crimes in various
neighborhoods, and the promptness and manner of han-
dling cases by courts and district attorneys.
The new committee disclaims any approach to the role
of vigilante or reformer. Its plan, following that of sim-
ilar committees in Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore, is
to maintain a systematic watch on crime and on the func-
tioning of criminal justice and to serve as an independent
check, an aid and a prod to law enforcing agencies. "This
is a citizens' job," says Mr. Guggenheim, "and we might
as well face it."
Security Upheld
TWENTY-ONE months after the social security act
became law, creating for the first time a scheme of
unemployment and old age insurance in this country, the
measure was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. By two
more five-to-four decisions, the Court endorsed the un-
employment insurance titles of the act and state measures
adopted under them. The division on old age benefits was
seven-to-two. Justices McReynolds and Butler dissented
all along the line. Justices Sutherland and Van Devanter
joined them in the unemployment insurance cases.
192
THE SURVEY
In giving the opinion of the Court, Justice Cardozo
stressed the conditions in the country, the widespread un-
employment between 1929 and 1936, and "the plight of
men and women at so low an age as forty" in holding or
seeking jobs. The court majority therefore invoked the
"general welfare" clause of the Constitution, holding that
the concept of this clause cannot be "static":
Needs that were narrow or parochial a century ago may
be interwoven in our day with the well-being of the nation.
What is critical or urgent changes with the times.
The unemployment insurance title of the act was chal-
lenged by the Charles C. Steward Machine Company, a
small Alabama concern with about fifteen workers, which
sought to recover $46.14 paid to the government as an
unemployment insurance tax. The old age benefits case
was brought by George F. Davis, a minority stockholder
in the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Boston,
who sought to prevent deductions and payments by the
company under the social security act.
The dissenters saw a threat to states rights in the social
security act. In regard to unemployment insurance, Justices
Sutherland and Van Devanter were prepared to uphold
the principle while denying the constitutionality of the
present law.
Almost as soon as the decision was handed down, plans
were taking shape to extend the coverage of the social
security act. Amendments to the old age benefits title
already proposed would bring under the law some two and
a half million persons now excluded — seamen, the unem-
ployed, persons over sixty-five years of age, employes of
non-profit agencies, and other groups.
Class of 1937
/^OLLEGE graduates are no longer stepping out into
*^-S an unfriendly world which has "no place" for young
job seekers. A report on a survey of 218 leading colleges
and universities recently released by the Bureau of Indus-
trial Service, Inc. and the annual report of the secretary
of appointments of Columbia University are substantial
straws indicating that prospects for this year's graduates
are only a little less favorable than those of the 1929
vintage, and markedly better than for those of 1936.
The survey covered institutions which account for nearly
half the total enrollment of male and coeducational in-
stitutions. Twenty-eight universities reported that more
than 90 percent of the senior class would be on payrolls this
summer. In the other 190 institutions, from 50 to 90 per-
cent of the seniors had positions assured some weeks before
Commencement. Engineering, business administration, teach-
ing and general business classifications are the fields of most
opportunity, according to this survey.
The annual report of Robert Foster Moore, secretary
of appointments of Columbia University, agrees with this
inquiry in finding "the past year ... the best in employ-
ment opportunities for our students and graduates since
1930." More than 90 percent of those just graduated
from the various schools of the university were placed
before Commencement, as compared with 70 percent of
the corresponding group at the same period two years ago.
The most frequent demands are for engineers. Present
indications are that 100 percent of Columbia's engineering
class of 1937 will have jobs by the end of their first month
out of college. All are being placed in their own profes-
JUNE 1937
sion. The experience of journalism, architecture and busi-
ness graduates is equally encouraging. The placement office
reports beginning salaries substantially higher than they
were a year ago. Young lawyers remain the "problem
graduates" of Columbia, as of the colleges and universities
included in the Industrial Service inquiry. Their placement
figures are conspicuously below the general university level,
and many of those on payrolls have gone outside their
profession for jobs.
Labor Standards
A BILL which would set a permanent bottom level
below which wages may not drop, a top limit above
which hours may not rise and abolish child labor in inter-
state industry or in industries directly affecting interstate
commerce has been introduced in both Senate and House.
At this writing, hearings on this new Black-Connery bill
are scheduled to begin within a few days.
The proposed measure would establish a board empow-
ered to fix industrial hour-and-wage standards, with regard
for regional conditions; to outlaw labor practices defined
as "oppressive" ; to exclude from interstate commerce goods
produced in factories violating standards established by the
board, or in factories employing children under sixteen.
The board is to proceed industry by industry, instead of
attempting to lay down a blanket rule.
No figures exist showing the proportion of industrial
activity that would be affected by such a measure, nor the
number of workers covered. The board would presumably
operate first in low-wage, long-hour areas of industry, and
these, figures of the Departments of Labor and Commerce
indicate, include cotton, silk and rayon textiles, canning,
and certain specialized types of manufacture such as
cigarette and paper box making.
One of the thorniest problems in drafting such legislation
for this country is that of the South, where wages are tra-
ditionally low, and where a wide differential as between
white and Negro labor has always been maintained. Never-
theless it seems likely at this writing that the Black-Connery
bill or a measure very like it will pass this session of Con-
gress. Friends of the plan believe that it would "get by"
the Supreme Court on the same line of reasoning that up-
held the Wagner Act.
And So On . . .
"FINANCIALLY speaking the most successful "button
-T for a cause" seems to be the Stop Lynching button sold
by volunteers for the National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People. At the end of April sales returns
were pressing $10,000 and still going strong. • • The so-
called marriage course at the University of Washington,
officially listed as Social Factors, attracted a registration of
twenty girls and one man. • • A congressman from New
York has proposed that the federal government should fol-
low the example of Michigan and charge solvent convicts
for their keep while "guests" of the nation. He goes Michi-
gan one better by proposing that they should also reimburse
Uncle Sam for the cost of their apprehension. • • On
June first there was no evidence that hearings were definitely
being scheduled on the Wagner-Steagall low cost housing
bill before the appropriate House committee. To push the
bill, write or wire President Roosevelt, Congressman Henry
B. Steagall, chairman of the House Banking and Currency
Committee, and members of Congress.
193
The Social Front
Relief
\X7HEN the administration's bill with
* * its billion and a half dollars to con-
tinue WPA came before the House, it
was clear that an easy majority such as
two years ago voted four billion dollars
for work relief and an additional $880
million for public works was definitely
out of the picture. On the necessity for
some federal relief money there was lit-
tle argument. Opposition was rather on
grounds of ways and means, expediency
and, most of all, economy.
There was considerable talk of re-
turning administration to states and lo-
calities; less of handing back to them the
total financial load. Loudest objections of
all were voiced in the House against
"handing the President and Harry Hop-
kins a blank check for relief." Assertions
that a billion dollars or so is needed be-
yond the amount specified by the bill
were matched by louder assertions that
the bill carried too large an appropria-
tion; that the country could and would
do with much less.
What happened however, was that
strenuous attempts were made in the
House to earmark the appropriation until,
with the $200 million or so already destined
for the Resettlement and Youth Admin-
istrations and other agencies, only about
$800 million would remain for WPA
which in this fiscal year is spending
$1,850 million and carries more than two
million persons on its rolls. Administra-
tion defenders warned that such treat-
ment of WPA would result in a labor
market flood; would throw out at least
600,000 WPA workers. The amendments
were lost and the bill sent to the Senate,
substantially as introduced, where at this
writing it faces another struggle.
Harry Hopkins, interviewed by the
United States News, reiterated his belief
in a continued work relief program, esti-
mated the country's permanent load of
unemployed at a shifting five millions and
placed hope for better coordination and
improved administration of work relief
in the proposed government reorganiza-
tion plan.
With Washington brows furrowed and
strategies taxed to the utmost by costs
and problems of unemployment relief,
the public remained confident. In a re-
cent poll by the American Institute of
Public Opinion on the question, "Do you
think the unemployment problem can be
solved?" 65 percent of answerers, coun-
try-wide, said "Yes."
While the struggle over relief appro-
priations went forward, resolutions lay
in Senate committee calling upon Presi-
dent Roosevelt to appoint a commission
to make a thorough study of relief —
situation, policy, method, cost, outlook.
The Murray-Hatch resolution (S.J.Res.
68), one of several to the same end, is
in substantial agreement with the stand
of the American Association of Social
Workers. [See The Survey, April 1937,
page 114.]
Spot Map — After a stormy winter, a re-
lief in Ohio faces another serious crisis.
The legislature has adjourned without
making any appropriation for relief, ex-
cept an emergency measure which will
allow local subdivisions to carry on for
about six weeks. County relief adminis-
trations have been disbanded and relief
responsibility thrown back on municipali-
ties and townships. With industrial em-
ployment and payrolls high, assemblymen
and the general public are unable to
understand why relief rolls still are large
and are concerned about possible ineligi-
bles on the rolls — but unwilling to pro-
vide administrative costs for careful inves-
tigation. The Hamilton County Welfare
PUBLIC FUNDS:
PRIVATE fUNDS:
CD otmei A»I
Showing percentage distribution of annual
expenditures for relief in 120 urban areas,
by source of funds and type of relief.
(' — Excludes CWA expenditures, November
1933— March 1934; !— Excludes WPA ex-
penditures, August — December 1935.) Only
about one percent of relief expenditure in
1935 was from private funds. From Trends
in Different Types of Public and Private
Relief in Urban Areas, 1929-35, U. S.
Children's Bureau publication No. 237.
Department (Cincinnati and environs)
officially closes its doors on June 15, after
which a skeleton staff will handle emer-
gency cases only and certify clients to
other agencies for future care. A small
fund is available for the transient and
emergency relief cases for which, by law,
the county must provide. Clients are flock-
ing to private agencies which are return-
ing them to the public department. Cleve-
land et al (Cuyahoga County) has a
small special tax fund, less than the usual
needs for a single month, made available
as an emergency appropriation.
In St. Louis, inadequate month-to-
month provision of state funds, lack of
city funds, misunderstandings between
local and state officials have thrown relief
into what a news correspondent recently
called "the sorriest muddle since the de-
pression began." At present there is a
large relief population receiving only
"half rations," there is no long range
program, and the city is more than $2
million "in the red" on its relief budget.
To cap the climax, early in May the
city's relief commission resigned. As we
go to press nothing has been done to re-
solve the situation.
An administrative order from the Ten-
nessee Department of Institutions and
Public Welfare gave notice that from
April 1 only emergency cases ("acute hu-
man suffering") would be accepted, be-
cause of the probability that "the general
direct relief program as now operated by
state funds" would be stopped in June or
July for lack of funds. Such direct relief
as may be given will be the responsibility
of counties or municipalities, for those
ineligible for WPA or social security.
WPA in Statistics— Reviewing WPA
since 1935, figures given out on its "an-
niversary" showed that it has operated
more than 121,000 projects, notably
improvements of highways, streets and
public buildings. The current WPA em-
ployment roll of 2,100,000 is a million
below the February 1936 peak.
In the Newspapers — A major New
York daily newspaper, unaware that syste-
matic statistics were kept on relief cases,
other than WPA and social security,
undertook to collect them. Gathered al-
most overnight, mostly by telegraph from
governors or other state officials, the re-
sults produced a figure so fantastically
inaccurate that a few days later the paper
found it necessary to publish a correction,
in the form of official figures collected
by Emerson Ross of the division of statis-
tics of WPA. Such errors as reporting
the number of individuals in relief fam-
ilies when number of families was sought,
194
THE SURVEY
ot the slip of a few decimals in transmit-
ting messages demonstrated the danger
of such "statistics." The bulletin of the
Joint Committee on Relief Statistics of
the American Public Welfare Associa-
tion points out that this demonstrates
"the need for keeping newspapers cur-
rently advised of the extent to which re-
liable statistics relating to relief adminis-
tration are available."
In Print — After Five Years, a summary
of the transient problem, reports the
entire five years of work of the National
Committee on Care of Transient and
Homeless. Besides discussing the work of
the committee "as a unique experiment in
social organization," the pamphlet in-
cludes a critique of the late federal
transient program and activities since its
liquidation, and takes a look at the fu-
ture for the transient. (The Committee
on Care of Transient and Homeless, 1270
Sixth Avenue, New York. Price 10 cents
a copy from the committee.) . . . Relief
to Indians in Wisconsin prepared by
Hazel F. Briggs and Stephen J. Schnei-
der, discusses the particular problems of
destitution among Indians as experienced
in Wisconsin, exemplifying the complica-
tions in status and peculiar cultural back-
ground, which Indian relief presents.
(Wisconsin Public Welfare Department,
315 South Carroll Street, Madison.)
The Insurances
AMONG the primitive Eskimos of
** Nunivak Island, social security is
"centuries old," according to Dr. Hans
Himmelherber, an anthropologist who
has been making a study of the tribe.
While some tribes practice exposure of
the aged, the Nunivak Island Eskimos
provide for their old people and their
needy "through gift festivals ... at
which the gifts are piled up and then
distributed to the old and poor first."
Administration — The organization of
an advisory council on social security was
announced recently by Senator Pat Harri-
son, chairman of the Senate committee on
finance, and Arthur J. Altmeyer, chair-
man of the Social Security Board. The
council is made up of twenty-four men
and women, representing employers, em-
ployes and the public. This group, in
cooperation with the board and a special
Senate committee will consider certain
phases of the security program, including
the advisability of increasing the amount
of monthly benefits under Title II for
those retiring in the early years of the
program; of commencing payments be-
fore January 1, 1942; and of including
groups now excluded. The council will
also discuss the size, character and dis-
position of the reserve fund. . . . Persons
who are over sixty-five and consequently
ineligible for old age benefits under the
act, but who are employed, will now be
allowed to apply for account numbers.
It is believed that this will be of ma-
terial assistance to the states when they
set up their records for unemployment
compensation. . . . Merging of the United
States Employment Service and the ad-
ministration of unemployment compensa-
tion under the social security act was
recommended last month by the New
York State Unemployment Insurance
Advisory Council. Herman A. Gray,
chairman of the council, points out that
registration of eligible unemployed, pay-
ment of benefits, and placement are
closely related. "The functions cannot
and should not be separated at any point,
in administration, in local offices, in policy,
in bookkeeping or in budgeting. Their
present separation in Washington results
in inefficiency, friction and unnecessary
delay."
Recent examinations in Indiana and
West Virginia for positions in state and
county welfare departments exemplify the
kind of tests being developed for filling
thousands of new positions created under
the social security act. In both states
analyses of duties and responsibilities
were prepared as bases for statements of
job specifications. The American Public
Welfare Association assisted in framing
and giving the examinations. The associa-
tion suggests that such tests should be
both written and oral and should include
an interview with an examining board to
bring out the social philosophy of the ap-
plicant, his attitudes "and related psy-
chological factors." The association is
undertaking a national study of job quali-
fications in an attempt to provide basic
data for the classification of positions in
this new field.
Regional Director Anna M. Rosenberg
(New York) announces that the Bureau
of Internal Revenue and the board in-
tend to proceed at once to investigate
complaints concerning violations of the
social security act and to penalize willful
violators. Reported violations include de-
ductions from workers' pay without re-
turn of such deductions to the Bureau
of Internal Revenue; filing of no returns
by employers; reports without workers'
account numbers, and others.
Old Age Benefits— The federal con-
tributory system should be broadened to
include groups now omitted, according to
the Committee on Old Age Security of
the Twentieth Century Fund which has
just made a fifteen-month study of the
problem. Public employes and employes
of religious, educational and other non-
profit organizations should at once be in-
cluded, the committee recommends. Be-
cause of "formidable difficulties of ad-
ministration," the committee does not
suggest the inclusion of agricultural
workers at this time. Coverage for full
time domestic workers would not be so
difficult, since families that employ them
' usually represent a high income group
and are accustomed to keeping records,
reporting income and paying taxes to the
federal government." Fair valuation of
part payment to household workers in the
form of food and lodging could be made
after some administrative experience, the
committee holds. The committee esti-
mates that 1,500,000 persons in public
service, aside from education, and 1,700,-
000 employed by non-profit agencies are
now excluded from the act. Far reaching
changes in the methods of financing old
age benefits will be recommended in the
final comprehensive report of the com-
mittee.
The Social Security Board claims ex-
perience to date indicates that approxi-
mately 70 percent of the wage earners
who die leave a widow or widower, and
that in approximately 50 percent of the
cases where an application for old age
benefits has been filed there are no other
assets in the estate aside from the
amount to be certified.
Unemployment Compensation -
The Wisconsin Industrial Commission
reported on May 3 that since benefits be-
came payable, nine months ago, 110,000
checks totaling $682,000 had been mailed
to 34,000 workers. Each check has cov-
ered one week of either partial or total
unemployment. The net balance of the
Wisconsin unemployment reserve fund
exceeded $21,700,000 after paying out in
benefits a sum equal to 3 percent of the
total contributions collected since July 1,
1934. Although 4300 Wisconsin employer
accounts are now potentially liable for
benefit payments, fewer than 1800 have
had occasion to make payments, and the
amounts involved were in the majority
of cases only a small part of their ac-
cumulated reserve. [See Survey Graphic,
April 1937, page 214]. On April 30,
the unemployment trust fund in the U.S.
Treasury amounted to $232,438,397.11.
This sum represented deposits and ac-
crued interest on accounts of thirty-four
states and the District of Columbia. . . .
Alaska's unemployment compensation law
was approved by the board early last
month, making forty-five accepted laws.
Nebraska and Delaware have recently
enacted similar laws, and it is expected
that these will be reviewed shortly. Only
three states — Illinois, Missouri, Florida
— and Hawaii have not yet enacted un-
employment compensation legislation, and
all of these have bills pending in their
legislatures. . . . Twenty-three states have
so far amended their unemployment com-
pensation laws. In the amendments and in
the new laws recently enacted, a definite
trend toward eliminating employe con-
tributions is noted. Only eight state laws
now require wage earner contributions
JUNE 1937
195
to unemployment compensation funds.
Changes also indicate a tendency to
broaden the coverage of state laws to in-
clude employers of one or more workers,
and to simplify administration.
New Publications — Unemployment
Compensation, What and Why? A brief,
complete and readable explanation in
pamphlet form. Publication No. 17 of the
Social Security Board. Order from the
superintendent of documents, Washing-
ton, D.C. . . . Analyses of State Unem-
ployment Compensation Laws, a tabular
analysis of the chief provisions of state
legislation under the security act, in-
cluding applicable provisions from other
state labor laws. From the superinten-
dent of documents, Washington, D.C.
Price 15 cents.
The Labor Front
QOVERNOR LEHMAN of New
York late last month signed a bill
creating a state board of mediation, with
an appropriation of $25,000 to carry on
its work of preventing and composing
labor disputes. . . . Wisconsin has enacted
a labor disputes act which defines "un-
fair labor practices"; outlaws company
unions; sets up a state labor board em-
powered to prevent unfair labor prac-
tices, to appoint arbitrators in industrial
disputes, to subpoena witnesses and rec-
ords. The three-man board will have
$50,000 a year to carry on its work. The
law provides for a fine of not more than
$500 or imprisonment for not more than
a year for violations.
Battle Lines — A special conference
of the American Federation of Labor
in Cincinnati the last week in May
decided on active opposition against the
Committee on Industrial Organization.
Though the ten CIO unions have been
suspended, not expelled, and are thus
technically still within the federation, the
conference approved plans for chartering
unions in fields already occupied by the
CIO organizations. Probably the first
field invaded will be that of the United
Mine Workers headed by John L. Lewis,
who is also chairman of the CIO. The
purpose of the rival unions will be to
weaken and, if possible, to destroy the
CIO unions. It is believed that the ten
CIO unions will be formally expelled at
the October convention of the federa-
tion.
Autos — The first contract recognizing
the United Automobile Workers as the
sole bargaining agency for the employes
was signed last month by representatives
of the Packard Motor Car Company
and the union. The contract, effective
until May 1, 1938, provides for vaca-
tions with pay, the shop steward system
to handle grievances, and a wage in-
crease of 3 cents an hour for all hourly
[.aid employes. The union pledges itself
not to permit any strikes "or any other
interference or any other stoppage, total
or partial of any of the company opera-
tions" for the term of the contract. In
the industry's first Wagner Act election,
about 14,000 Packard workers voted
four to one to be represented only by
the UAWA. . . . The next objective of
the organization effort in the Detroit
area is now known to be the Ford Motor
Company, with 90,000 employes. The
company has an additional 60,000 work-
ers in other communities. The organiza-
tion campaign is under the direction of
Richard F. Frankensteen who had a
prominent part in the General Motors
and Chrysler strikes. Mr. Ford recently
distributed a message to all Ford em-
ployes, reiterating his anti-union views.
The campaign, which has been quietly
planned for weeks, opened with an out-
burst of violence when CIO representa-
tives attempted to distribute union lit-
erature at the Ford Rouge plant in
Dearborn. Each side blames the other as
the instigator of the "riot," in which sev-
eral unionists, including Frankensteen,
were injured.
Textiles — The textile organization
drive of the CIO, which is being di-
rected by Sidney Hillman of the Amal-
gamated Clothing Workers [see Survey
Graphic, June 1937, page 338] was
carried to New England late last month.
The New England campaign was opened
in Lawrence, Mass., the only important
textile center not affected by the general
strike in 1934. . . . The CIO has gained
its first important victory in the silk and
rayon industry in signing a contract cov-
ering 4000 workers in 200 plants making
silk and artificial silk cloth. The provi-
sions of the contract include full union
recognition and a minimum wage of $15
a week.
Railroads — Leaders of fourteen rail-
way unions will meet with regional com-
mittees representing the managements of
eastern, southern and southeastern roads
in Chicago this month to negotiate union
demands for wage increases of 20 cents
an hour. It is the hope of the roads that
wage demands may be adjusted through
direct negotiation, much as the national
committee of railroad presidents handled
the 10 percent wage reduction in 1932.
This cut has already been restored. The
present demands would raise wages above
the 1929 level.
Geneva Delegates — The official del-
egation to represent this country at the
International Labor Conference in Ge-
neva will be: for the government, Ed-
ward F. McGrady, assistant secretary
of labor, and Grace Abbott, professor of
public welfare, University of Chicago;
for the workers, Robert J. Watt, sec-
retary of the Massachusetts Federation
of Labor; for the employers, Henry L.
Harriman, chairman of the board,
Boston Elevated Railway Company.
There will also be a group of advisers
for the government, the workers and the
employers. [See Survey Graphic, June
1937, page 346.]
Record and Report — Industrial
versus Craft Unionism, compiled by
Julia E. Johnson (H. W. Wilson Co.
320 pp. Price 90 cents) is primarily a
debate handbook. It includes a great deal
of timely material for general informa-
tion on this much discussed question. . . .
Minimum Wage Legislation in the
United States, by Eleanor Davis. A se-
lected bibliography of recent books,
pamphlets and magazine references. (In-
dustrial Relations Section, Princeton
University, Princeton, N. J.) . . . Who
Are the Job Seekers? An analysis of the
characteristics of 7,800,000 employment
office registrants in December 1935, and
6,600,000 registrants in July 1936, pre-
pared by the division of standards and
research of the U. S. Employment
Service (Superintendent of documents,
Washington, D. C.) ... The Women's
Garment Industry: An Economic An-
alysis, by Lazare Teper. Material for
discussion groups and adult education
classes, well presented in brief compass.
(International Ladies' Garment Work-
ers' Union, 3 West 16 Street, New York.
Price 25 cents.)
Public Assistance
««/^RANDMA" Weeks of Florida, age
^•^ not given but said to be Florida's
oldest resident and the oldest recipient
of public assistance in the country, has
received her first check, amounting to
$7.50. With it she bought, among other
things, a coffee pot and a butcher knife.
There is some concern in the postoffice in
Tampa where "Grandma" resides, over
the size of her fan mail which is sent to
her via the State Department of Welfare.
"Grandma" is one of an estimated total
of 1,718,700 individuals who received aid
during May under federal-state public
assistance plans, from an estimated total
expenditure from federal, state and local
sources of $30 million. Of these 361,700
were dependent children in 140,000 fam-
ilies, 1,323,000 were needy old people and
34,000 were blind.
On May 15 the federal government had
granted to states participating in the
three programs an aggregate of $145,-
528,239.23; of which $124,519,802.01 was
for old age assistance; $5,311,274.73 for
the needy blind; and $15,697,162.49 for
aid to dependent children.
Average public assistance payments in
March 1937 were: aid to the needy aged,
196
THE SURVEY
$18.77 (individual); aid to needy blind,
$25.41 (individual) ; aid to dependent
children, $29.02 (per family).
Short Circuit -Instead of granting fed-
eral old age assistance money to states
for the current quarter in a lump sum,
as is customary, funds for April alone
were given. Availability of May and June
payments depends on congressional action
on the Independent Offices Appropriation
Bill, at this writing tied up in commit-
tee. The 1936-37 appropriations for old
age assistance have been exhausted but
the bill in question, when enacted, would
make available certain federal funds for
current old age assistance costs.
Recommendation — "Because payments
to aged people under state old age as-
sistance laws and under the federal pen-
sion system should offer something more
than bare emergency relief," the Com-
mittee on Old Age Security of the Twen-
tieth Century Fund, in a current report,
is recommending important changes in
public assistance provisions of the social
security act. As evidence of inadequacy
of payments, the committee submits find-
ings of its staff that although average
payments in January 1937 were above
$30 in one state, the average for the
country as a whole was less than $19 a
month and in one state as low as $4.06.
As an incentive to the states to make
more adequate payments, the committee
suggests a provision that no federal
grant be made to any state unless its
average assistance payment amounts to
at least $12, the federal grant to cover
two thirds of such minimum. An addi-
tional recommendation is that where
average pensions exceed the minimum,
the federal grant be one half of the ad-
ditional amount above $12 and up to $30.
Grace Abbott dissents from the ma-
jority committee recommendation, on the
grounds that "inescapably" the plan would
encourage a $12 average grant and
"would be interpreted by some legisla-
tures and governors as federal approval
of the $12 average and disapproval of
larger pensions." The majority opinion
sees a special merit in the plan because
it would afford the greater measure of
federal help to the poorer states.
Adult Education
gional conferences for the current year,
to be held in cooperation with local agen-
cies in the Pacific Northwest, California,
Rocky Mountain region, Minneapolis,
Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pitts-
burgh, New Jersey, the eastern South,
and New England.
as an informal confer-
ence discussion, the twelfth annual
meeting of the American Association for
Adult Education was held at Skytop
Lodge in the Pocono Mountains, Penn-
sylvania, last month. The meeting was
organized around three general topics:
the social significance of adult education ;
democracy and adult education; a work-
ing philosophy of adult education. The
association is organizing a series of re-
JUNE 1937
Education for Democracy is the title of a
stimulating radio program and study guide
for discussion groups. It is based on the
first publication of the Educational Policies
Commission, The Unique Function of
Education in American Democracy, pre-
pared with the collaboration of Charles A.
Beard and Hendrik Willem Van Loon. Both
may be secured from the Commission, 1201
Sixteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.
New School — Signalizing its establish-
ment as a permanent adult education in-
stitution, the New School for Social Re-
search, 66 West 12 Street, New York,
has formed a faculty council to act as an
advisory board in matters of educational
policy. The twenty-five members of the
council have been lecturers at the school
during the sixteen years of its existence.
The council will advise with the director
on the proposed curriculum for each
term. It will also submit for decision and
election by the board of trustees the
names of persons to fill the offices of di-
rector, associate director and assistant di-
rector, should a vacancy arise.
Teacher Training — Adult education
programs including vocational training
and elementary school subjects are now
usual in state and federal prisons. New
Eastern State Penitentiary, Pennsylvania,
last year launched an experiment in teach-
er training for prisoners chosen for their
knowledge of skilled trades, stenography
or bookkeeping. The courses were made
as practical as possible, and included
classroom organization and management,
tests and measurements, trade analysis,
methods of teaching. The training courses
were so successful that the experiment is
being continued this year.
Illiteracy— Approximately 700,000
adults have been taught to read and write
in the last four years through the educa-
tion programs of FERA and WPA, ac-
cording to a recent report from Washing-
ton. In March 1937, 241,048 men and
women were enrolled in 22,779 literacy
classes with 5785 teachers engaged in
their instruction. The 1930 census showed
four and a half million adult illiterates
in the United States, and educational
authorities hold that at least as many
more are "functionally illiterate," un-
able to use their limited reading ability
for any practical benefit. Texas has the
largest number of adults enrolled in
WPA literacy classes, 18,561. Pennsyl-
vania has 17,607. In New York City,
17,999 men and women are learning to
read and write, while the rest of the
state reports only 1993. Other states with
enrollments over 10,000 are: Georgia,
Illinois, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina
and Tennessee.
Youth
DUBLIC service scholarship loans will
be tried next fall at the University of
Wisconsin as an experiment in helping
able students to finance their college
courses, and also to give them some ex-
perience in public service. The plan, in-
augurated by Governor La Follette, re-
quires the state government to use these
graduates as special administrative and
research apprentices for a limited period
while they are repaying the scholarship
loan. They will not displace regular
civil servants, but on completing theii
apprenticeship they can, if sufficiently
interested, take the regular civil service
examinations. The details of the plan
are being worked out by a faculty com-
mittee and the personnel division of the
state capitol.
Vocational guidance and counseling for
Negro youth was organized by the Na-
tional Urban League last month in high-
schools and colleges in fifty urban
centers. The eight-day campaign was
endorsed by the National Youth Admin-
istration.
For Farm Youth— Sons and daugh-
ters of tenant and other low income farm
families will be offered agricultural and
homemaking training courses through a
nation-wide project of the National
Youth Administration, in cooperation
with the Department of Agriculture and
various state schools and colleges.
Farm youth who have not been able to
go beyond elementary school will be se-
lected on the basis of eligibility for NYA
employment and ability to profit by the
training plan. They will be assigned in
groups as special students in one to
three-month courses, receiving tuition,
subsistence and a $5 monthly cash allow-
ance. They will have practical instruc-
tion in farm and home economics sub-
jects, and work half time on projects on
the school or other public property.
Color Line —A protest against the re-
fusal of educational authorities to allow
him to enroll in the School of Pharmacy
197
of the University of Tennessee has been
filed by William B. Redmond, a young
Xegro living in Nashville. Counsel for
Mr. Redmond state that he does not ask
to attend classes with white students, but
that he asks the enforcement of a statute
passed in 1869 requiring the provision of
education for all, regardless of color.
Under Tennessee law, it is a misde-
meandr for white and Negro students to
attend the same classes. Counsel for
Mr. Redmond point out that the state
now makes no provision for instruction
in pharmacy for Negroes. The suit is
part of a move by the National Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Colored
People to remove discrimination against
Negroes in public educational oppor-
tunities.
Child Welfare
C LOWLY but steadily the number of
children receiving foster home care
is increasing, according to the May 1937
issue of Social Statistics, supplement to
the U. S. Children's Bureau's monthly
publication, The Child. Reports from the
agencies in twenty-three reporting areas
which are cooperating in the bureau's
social statistics project show an average
increase of 5 percent in this type of care
since the last such computation in May
1936, and of 36 percent since 1929. On
the other hand, institutional care of chil-
dren, in twenty-four reporting areas, de-
creased 4 percent in 1936 as compared
with 1935 and 16 percent as compared
with 1929.
In day nursery care an upward trend,
which first was noticeable in the 1934
Children's Bureau reports, continues to
be evident, with 1936 statistics showing
a 10 percent increase over 1935. How-
ever, in the areas reporting there were
only about four fifths as many children
under care in day nurseries in 1936 as
in 1929.
News Notes — Beginning May 1, New
York State's system of mother's assist-
ance, administered by county boards of
child welfare, came under the provisions
and the benefits of the federal social
security act. Last year, without benefit
of federal funds, the boards paid an
average monthly allowance of $18.11 per
child. Some 4982 new cases were added
last year, about 70 percent of them in
New York City, and 4462 were discon-
tinued. During the past ten years, the
combined case load of the boards has in-
creased from 14,514 families with 40,123
children to 28,924 families with 67,855
children under sixteen.
The Social Service Division, U. S. Chil-
dren's Bureau, is making a summary of
laws on interstate placement of children
with an investigation of some of the prob-
lems of administration. It also has under
way an analysis of all legislation for the
protection of children under care away
from their own homes and a study of
adoptions including an analysis of prob-
lems in some two thousand cases and an
evaluation of public services and pro-
cedures in connection with adoptions.
More Needy Children— The Chil-
dren's Bureau of Cleveland, in a recent
report to the Cleveland Foundation re-
vealed i"creases in numbers of children
placed in boarding homes and of those
needing placement in the city during 1936.
The report predicts unprecedented need
for this service in 1937, because families
are not being rehabilitated as rapidly as
in pre-depression years; older children
cannot get jobs; relatives are less often
financially able to take children; fewer
free homes are available and children
placed in them frequently are returned
because of inadequate income. The county
child welfare board and the humane so-
ciety are reported to be unable to increase
the number of children under their care.
Parents are asking to have their children
placed because they are anxious about the
future of relief or have been evicted and
are in unsuitable living quarters.
Mothers' Milk— The largest mothers'
milk bureau in the United States, that
established under the Children's Welfare
Federation of New York City, today
supplies between thirty-five and forty-five
babies with their essential diet. Twenty-
five mothers, each carefully tested and
examined, whose own babies do not re-
quire all of the food nature provides for
them, are the source of supply. The young
"customers" are in New Jersey, Connecti-
cut, Pennsylvania and Maryland, as well
as New York, some of the milk being
shipped by airmail or train in frozen form.
Eighty-five percent of prematurely born
or seriously ill babies served by the bureau
during its fifteen years have survived.
Publications — A newly revised, classi-
fied bibliography covering the various
phases of social work for children has
been issued by the Child Welfare League
of America. Originally suggested by the
curriculum committee on child welfare
courses of the American Association of
Schools of Social Work, this bibliography
is the work of a special committee, Edith
Baylor of Boston, chairman. Materials
included range from selected articles in
National Conference of Social Work
Proceedings (1875 through 1936) to per-
tinent fiction. Price 25 cents a copy, less
in quantity, from the league, 130 East
22 Street, New York. ... A report
on the use of volunteers in children's
agencies and institutions, also the work
of a special committee, has been issued
by the league. Besides outlining a brief
program for the use of individual agen-
cies, it discusses the practical problems
and opportunities involved. All sugges-
tions are specifically in terms of the chil-
dren's field. A short bibliography is in-
cluded. Price 15 cents, from the league.
... A list of references on foster home
care and one on adoption have been com-
piled by Evangeline Kendall, for the
Children's Bureau. (Superintendent of
documents, Washington, D.C. ) . . . P'os-
ter Homes: a bibliography available in
mimeographed form from the Minnesota
State Board of Control, St. Paul, Minn.
The Public's Health
/"'"AINS in public health made under
^"^ the leadership of Surgeon General
Parran since the advent of the social
security act a year ago show that this
year for the first time all states and
territories have been able to provide
means for training their public health
workers. State and federal officials at-
tending a recent conference in Washing-
ton, D.C. found that forty-six states have
strengthened their public health activities
and forty-two their sanitary engineering
facilities. Thirty-two states have made
gains in social disease control and in
laboratory research into the cause and
cure of disease. Many states reported
gains in: methods of collecting vital sta-
tistics, promotion of industrial hygiene,
tuberculosis control, health education,
child hygiene, cancer control, food and
drug inspection, mental hygiene, milk
sanitation methods.
The health officers, meeting for their
thirty-fifth conference, were reminded by
Surgeon General Parran that last year
the conference discussed the hope of bet-
ter health for people of the United States
through provision of the social security
act, and that this year the first realiza-
tions of that hope could be recorded.
With new health service standards being
set up, Dr. Parran pointed out that great
difficulty is encountered in securing and
training adequate public health staffs. In
discussing the first year under social se-
curity, Josephine Roche, assistant secre-
tary of the treasury, said that although
only a bare beginning has yet been made
toward improving the nation's physical
welfare, "as a result of the act's first
year of operation more than a thousand
additional public health nurses, more
than six hundred additional doctors and
nearly five hundred additional experts in
sanitary engineering are at work in the
United States."
Short on Specialists — -A special study
of obstetric facilities in the so-called "tri-
state metropolitan area of New York"
was made for the Hospital Survey of
New York by the Maternity Center As-
sociation. A lack of resident doctors and
nurses trained for the special care of
mothers in childbirth was found to be
an outstanding weakness of governmental,
198
voluntary and proprietary hospitals in
the area studied. In only half of the
municipal hospitals visited has the resi-
dent physician had specialist training for
the care of mothers in childbirth. Three
fourths of the voluntary hospitals visited
have no resident physician with previous
special training in obstetrics. In hospitals
with nurse training schools, two thirds
of the nurses in charge of teaching ob-
stetrics to students have no special train-
ing in the subject. The number of hos-
pital beds for maternity patients in the
area, however, was found to be suffi-
cient, probably till 1940 or after.
Practical Helpers — For the past
eighteen months the Works Progress Ad-
ministration of New York City has car-
ried on a demonstration in the city known
as "home care of chronic patients proj-
ect." More than six hundred chronically
ill patients have been cared for. The ma-
jority are referred by the Henry Street
Visiting Nurse Service and others by the
Emergency Relief Bureau. The project
itself provides no medical or nursing ser-
vice. Its aim is to offer complete house-
keeping service, without which the patient
could not remain at home. The house-
keepers on the project are selected care-
fully, usually are fairly experienced and
receive supplementary training under the
supervision of a home economics teacher.
They receive long term assignments and
each housekeeper serves an average of
two patients a week.
Pioneer — Birth control became legal in
Puerto Rico on May 1 when acting Gov-
ernor Menendez Ramos signed a bill
passed by the insular legislature striking
out birth control prohibition. Governor
Blanton Winship made a statement
through Mr. Ramos that the bill had his
complete approval. The present excess
population and its rate of growth, par-
ticularly in recent years, with increasing
unemployment, poverty and misery were
among factors which brought about the
passage of the bill. A further bill was
passed and signed creating a eugenics
board for Puerto Rico. This board will
have authority to pass upon candidates
for marriage and to order sterilization of
the insane and incurably diseased, ac-
cording to news reports.
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
If You Have "ACID INDIGESTION"
Alkalize Your Stomach This Way in Few Minutes
VOU can relieve even the
most annoying symptoms of
acid stomach in almost as little
time, now, as it takes to tell.
The answer is quick and sim-
ple: You alkalize your stomach
almost instantly this way:
Take — two teaspoonfuls of Phil-
lips' Milk of Magnesia 30 min-
utes after meals. Or, take two
Phillips' Milk of Magnesia Tab-
lets, each of which contains the
equivalent of a teaspoonful of
the liquid form.
Try this method. Get a bottle
of the liquid Phillips' for home
use. A box of the Phillips' tab-
lets that you can carry with
you in pocket or purse —
only 25^ for a big box.
Watch out that any you
accept is clearly labeled
"Phillips' Milk of Magnesia.
PHILLIPS'
MILK OF MAGNESIA
MERCUROCHROME, H.W. &D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodium)
After a thorough investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
(1935)
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Request
HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC
Baltimore, Md.
affect 15 percent of the population of the
United States. 'The truth may hurt,' said
New York City Health Commissioner
John L. Rice, 'but the more the average
citizen knows about venereal disease the
sooner it will be stamped out.' "... As
part of the effort to break "the conspiracy
of silence" surrounding syphilis, the New
York Association for Improving the Con-
dition of the Poor sent to all its contribu-
tors a bulletin citing that disease as one
of the major problems of relief agencies.
Syphilis was a "known problem" last year
in 215 families which the AICP assisted
to the extent of $20,847.
Hospitals
Taboo Breakers — The Pulitzer Prize
Committee of the Columbia University
School of Journalism awarded to The
Daily News, tabloid newspaper of New
York City, honorable mention for "the
most disinterested and meritorious public
service rendered by any American news-
paper during the year 1936." Announce-
ment of the award read: "To The Daily
News for its campaign covering venereal
diseases and prophylaxis. These diseases
AN all-time record was reached in 1936
in the total number of hospital beds
available in the United States and in the
number of patients using them, according
to the annual census of hospitals made
by the American Medical Association's
Council on Medical Education and Hos-
pitals.
It is estimated that one person in fif-
teen in the United States was admitted
during 1936 to one of the country's 6189
registered hospitals. There were 1,096,-
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLV
199
721 beds available and 8,646,885 patients
during the year, whose average stay was
thirteen days. In 1935 there were 1,075,
139 beds and 7,717,154 patients.
In connection with the census, a special
study was made of overcrowding in men-
tal hospitals. It was found that a tend-
ency to overcrowd "seems to be general,
if not chronic, in state mental institu-
tions." In the 228 such hospitals studied,
the excess of patients over the rated
capacity was less than 15 percent in
sixty-one institutions; from 15 to 30 per-
cent in forty-six; from 30 to 50 percent
in twenty-four; and 50 percent and over
in four.
With more than 100,000 new patients
admitted to the mental hospitals of the
United States during 1935 (federal census
bureau's latest enumeration of institu-
tionalized mental patients) the total
number of patients on the books of the
427 public and private mental hospitals
reached 466,045 by the end of that year.
From this total reports were missing for
a few small hospitals. More than 85 per-
cent of all institutionalized mental pa-
tients were in state hospitals.
The AMA census found conditions of
overcrowding so extreme in state mental
hospitals that beds often were in corridors
and passageways, frequently placed head
to head or even side by side. State hospital
commissions, welfare departments and
hospital superintendents are pointing out
the higher rate of discharge and recovery
of patients from mental hospitals where
overcrowded conditions do not exist.
While most states are not keeping pace
with the needs of the mentally ill, the
National Committee on Mental Hygiene
has made recommendations from which,
says the AMA council, census returns in-
dicate that most states are trying to
benefit.
The construction program of the Public
Works Administration financed by loans
or grants more than two thirds of all
hospitals built during the past three years,
according to the 1936 report of Harold
L. Ickes, PWA administrator. Approxi-
mately $17 million was allotted for con-
struction work at state institutions for
the mentally ill and defectives, which has
helped materially to relieve crowded
conditions.
Dollars and Doctors
A LOOK-BACK to The Survey of
•^ May 13, 1916, throws light on the
time element in health insurance, group
and social medicine. "The value of health
insurance and the need of it in the United
States have been generally conceded,"
commented the editor twenty-one years
ago, "but the form it is to take and how
the experience of Europe may be applied
to this country are subjects of lively and
fruitful debate, to which The Survey's
pages will be heartily opened."
Doctors Speak Up — The Medical
Society of the State of New York has
inaugurated a "speaker's service bulletin,"
aiming to "help make the medical pro-
fession vocal."
"In these changing times, many forces
are operating to affect the health of the
public. ... A word here and there, even
a brief one, as the physician goes his way,
may achieve in the sum a vast public in-
fluence," says the committee for the new
plan. Subjects of early bulletins distribu-
ted to doctor members include: Tubercu-
losis Is Still a Serious Problem (early
diagnosis campaign) ; Anything Can Hap-
pen (social medicine, mostly con).
Still True — Dollars, Doctors and Dis-
ease, by William Trufant Foster, a recent
Public Affairs pamphlet, draws attention
once more to the findings of the Commit-
tee on Costs of Medical Care, reported in
1932 and still largely lacking decisive
results.
The author points out that public
health services now supported by taxa-
tion are more extensive than is realized.
How far government jurisdiction should
be extended is the question posed as vital
to the medical profession and to laymen.
(Pamphlet No. 10. Price 10 cents from
the Public Affairs Committee, National
Press Building, Washington, D. C.)
Canadian Approach — The Medical
Association of Ontario, Canada, antici-
pating a probable government plan for
health insurance for the province within
a year or two, is experimenting with
procedures for putting the measure into
effect. Through an arrangement with the
government the association, as a prelim-
inary trial, handled medical services for
all relief recipients in the province. With
the cooperation of the Rockefeller Foun-
dation, the Essex Laboratory of Medical
Economic Research at Windsor, Ontario,
now is conducting further diversified ex-
periments in medical relief.
Interpretation
"FAISTINGUISHED interpretation
*~^ in 1936-37" recently was recog-
nized by the Social Work Publicity Coun-
cil with its annual presentation of verbal
laurels. Awards this year were earned
by: the "Human Security Week" of the
Florida State Board of Social Welfare;
The Councillor, organ of the Baltimore
Council of Social Agencies ; the public
relations program of the Los Angeles
Community Welfare Federation; the
maternal welfare campaign of the
Onondaga Medical Society, Syracuse, N.
Y. ; the campaign booklet, "80 percent of
the People," issued by the United Hos-
pital Fund of New York; the exposition
of "Community Serviceland" by the
Community Chest of Worcester, Mass. ;
the 1936 campaign booklet of the Henry
Street Visiting Nurse Service of New
York. Citations and the names of the
individuals who earned the publicity
crowns are published in the May 1937
issue of the council's Bulletin. (Price 30
cents a copy; or included with member-
ship rates, from the council, 130 East
22 Street, New York.)
How to Do It — With interpretation
at long last an urgent concern of social
workers, whatever their walk of social
work life, the Russell Sage Foun4ation
comes forward with a "how to do it"
manual by Helen Cody Baker of the
Chicago Council of Social Agencies and
Mary Swain Routzahn of the RSF staff.
(How to Interpret Social Work. 79 pp.
Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.)
This is a study course and the authors,
in their first breath, assert that it is not
for "publicity specialists." It is, they say,
for run of the mill social workers who
in the course of their day-to-day job
must do all those things which add up
to interpretation.
The course of twelve lessons is de-
signed for groups under local leadership,
with a good deal of material for state
or regional institutes. It seems self-evi-
dent however that it will be seized upon
for light and leading by many people
who must do the job without benefit of
group discussion or organized institute.
The authors see the public, "the people
we are talking to," in a series of en-
larging circles spreading from the board
and staff, out through clients, cooperat-
ing agencies, contributors, "key-people,"
socially minded people, finally to reach
the general public. To them "we tell our
story" through the spoken word, the
written word and pictures. Ten of the
twelve lessons deal with the method of
approaching each circle by means of these
three media; the other two with com-
bining all approaches into a planned pro-
gram with the responsibility shared by
local, state and national agencies. Each
chapter is replete with "cases" and
stimulating questions for class discussion
or for self communion. The one on the
written word is accompanied by twenty-
five pages or so of carefully selected ex-
amples reproduced photographically.
Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Routzahn do
not go into the philosophy of the inter-
pretation of social work — that is another
story, yet to be written, perhaps even to
be evolved. Meantime the job must be
done. Their manual should make pos-
sible a better job here and now wher-
ever "here" happens to be.
For the Eye-Minded — A series of
lantern slides showing the duties of the
workers in the Gallinger Memorial Hos-
pital, Washington, D. C. — from fireman
to superintendent — has been prepared by
Elwood Street, director of public welfare
of the District of Columbia. The purpose,
he says, is to "glorify" the humbler as-
pects of the operation of a great hospital,
for the edification of the board of direc-
tors and of various community groups be-
fore which lantern-lectures will be given.
A new talking slide film, For All Our
Sakes, sponsored by the American Social
Hygiene Association for use in public
education on syphilis, may be secured
from the association, 50 West 50 Street,
New York. . . . Two new exhibit charts
for tuberculosis education, may be or-
dered from the Health Education Service
of the National Tuberculosis Association,
50 West 50 Street, New York.
Professional
C OCIAL work educators talked back to
legislators in Missouri recently when
the house of representatives passed a
resolution attacking social workers and
memorializing Congress to protect the
state against their "intrusion" in the ad-
ministration of the social security act.
Up spoke Frank J. Bruno, of Washing-
ton University, Arthur S. Emig of the
University of Missouri and the Rev.
Joseph Husslein of St. Louis University
ir a joint public statement, widely circu-
200
THE SURVEY
lated in the press, giving the practical
reasons why experienced, well-equipped
personnel are a sine qua non to the
success of "the greatest experiments in
social protection ever undertaken in any
nation."
Pursuit of Knowledge — The Summer
Institute for Social Progress meets on the
campus of Wellesley College from July
10-24 for its fifth session. Colston E.
Warne, professor of economics at Am-
herst College will head a faculty includ-
ing: Prof. Percy Wells Bidwell, from
the University of Buffalo; Prof. Carl
Joachim Friedrich of Harvard Univer-
sity; Prof. Alfred D. Sheffield of Welles-
ley; Prof. John H. Williams of Harvard
and Leroy E. Bowman, of the United
Parents' Associations of New York.
Members representing many interests and
occupations will confer on the general
subject "The World Challenge to De-
mocracy— Can America Meet It?" In-
formation from Dorothy P. Hill, 420
Jackson Building, Buffalo, N. Y.
Courses in housing will be offered at
a number of New York colleges this
summer. Edith Elmer Wood will conduct
two courses at Teachers College, July
12-August 20. ... With the cooperation
of some twenty other experts, Carol
Aronovici is planning a course in housing,
city planning and low rent housing man-
agement, at the School of Architecture
and Applied Arts, New York University,
June 14-July 28. Under the auspices of
Pocono Study Tours, 545 Fifth Avenue,
New York, Mr. Aronovici has arranged
another summer activity. Assisted by
Dorothy Shaffter, he will conduct a
European housing tour, sailing June 28.
A field course in housing and city plan-
ning is scheduled, with visits to England,
Norway, Sweden, Holland and France,
returning September 14. ... The Ameri-
can Institute of Real Estate Appraisers
and the School of Business of Columbia
University will cooperate in two courses
at Columbia, during June and July. . . .
The Federation of Architects, Engineers,
Chemists and Technicians is sponsoring
a series of eleven weekly discussions
(evenings) on recent housing and plan-
ning developments, at the federation's
school, 114 East 16 Street. Open to the
public at a nominal fee.
Contingent on the number of new can-
didates presenting themselves, a course in
interpretation of social service has been
planned at the Northwestern University
division of social work, with Helen Cody
Baker of the Chicago Council of Social
Agencies as leader. Information from
William Byron, director, social service
department, Northwestern University,
Evanston, 111. ... A full listing of sum-
mer courses in public health is published
in the May 1937 issue of the American
Journal of Public Health, page 546. . . .
Annual summer institutes of the Com-
munity Chests and Councils, Inc., will
be held: for the Great Lakes region, at
College Camp, Wis., July 19-24; for the
Blue Ridge at Blue Ridge, N.C., July
26-31. . . . The annual conference on
marriage and the family, with emphasis
upon problems of teaching marriage, will
be held July 5-9 at the University of
North Carolina. Full information from
R. M. Grumman, extension division of
the university, Chapel Hill, N.C.
Memorial — Honoring the three staff
members of the Denver Public Welfare
Bureau who were killed at their jobs
last spring by a supposedly demented cli-
ent, a scholarship loan fund has been
undertaken. Bearing the names of the
three young men for whom it is a
memorial, the Tunnel-Milliken-Di Dio
Scholarship Loan Fund aims "to fos-
ter in the community a deeper under-
standing of the principles and aims of this
profession" through encouraging a high
standard of social work education. Efforts
are being made to raise a fund of $10,000
to be granted to the University of Denver
School of Social Work and administered
as a revolving loan fund for needy stu-
dents pursuing studies in social work.
Checks contributed to this fund should
be made payable to Leo A. Steinhardt,
treasurer and sent to the fund, care of
the International Trust Company, Seven-
teenth and California Streets, Denver.
Injustice — Grave injustice was done
the American Association of Social Work-
ers in The Survey of March 15 when only
a half a year's new noses were counted
Public Affairs
RESTLESS AMERICANS, by Cliffton T.
Little. Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 9. Price
10 cents from the Public Affairs Committee,
National Press Building, Washington, D. C.
Analysis of large areas with low living
standards in this country and of the need
for better population distribution.
LIGHT ALONG TOBACCO ROAD, by
Robert C. Dexter. The American Unitarian
Association, 25 Beacon Street, Boston.
A description of sharecroppers, with a
discussion of methods suggested for the al-
leviation of their situation.
Housing
HOMES FOR WORKERS— Housing Division
Bulletin No. 3, Federal Emergency Adminis-
tration of Public Works. U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington, D. C.
A joint project of PWA and WPA, pre-
pared for use in the adult education classes
of WPA's educational division, this primer
analyzes the problem in simple terms.
WHAT PRICE SUBSIDY— Pamphlet No. 4.
HOUSING CONFRONTS CONGRESS—
Pamphlet No. 5. New York City Housing
Authority, 10 East 40 Street, New York City.
Showing why government subsidy is the
only method under present conditions
THE PAMPHLET SHELF
whereby low cost housing can be achieved,
and analyzing the various types of subsidy.
Preparing for hearings on the Wagner-
Steagall housing bill the authority replies
to some of the statements made during the
last year's Senate debate on the 1936
Wagner bill.
Buying Health
EIGHT YEARS WORK IN MEDICAL ECO-
NOMICS, 1929-1936. RECENT TRENDS AND
MOVES IN MEDICAL CARE. The Julius Rosen-
wald Fund, 4901 Ellis Avenue, Chicago.
A discussion of the fund's interest and
activities in an economic experiment in
medical care, and a discussion of the ex-
pansion and present shortcomings of social-
ized medical care.
COOPERATIVE HEALTH ASSOCIATIONS
— THE ESSENTIALS OF ORGANIZATION AND
FUNCTION, prepared by the executive board
of the medical bureau. The Cooperative
League of the U.S.A. Price 25 cents from
the Bureau of Cooperative Medicine, 5 East
57 Street, New York.
An outline of the types of associations
suitable to the needs of widely varying
communities and groups.
IS HEALTH THE PUBLIC'S BUSINESS,
by James Rorty. Social Action pamphlet, Vol.
Ill, No. 6. Price 10 cents from Council for
Social Action, 289 Fourth Avenue, New
York.
Offered as "primary factual material for
churchmen," the pamphlet surveys the
whole problem of what is characterized as
"the chaos in our health services." The
case for group medicine is presented and
the opposition scrutinized.
Professional
CAMPAIGN WORK BOOK, issued by the
Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare
Funds, 71 West 47 Street, New York City.
Price 65 cents.
Intended as "a practical guide to the
organization of successful Federation and
Welfare Fund campaigns."
SOME EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS IN
SUPERVISION. Family Welfare Associa-
tion of America, 130 East 22 Street, New
York City. Price 25 cents.
A study by a group of social workers
who have recently become supervisors, on
methods and problems of supervision and
the orientation of the worker as a begin-
ning case worker.
SALARIES AND PROFESSIONAL QUALI-
FICATIONS OF SOCIAL WORKERS IN
CHICAGO, 1935, by Merrill F. Krugoff.
University of Chicago Press. 89 pp. Price 50
cents.
A study undertaken at the request of the
Chicago Council of Social Agencies con-
cluding a series of studies in special fields.
JUNE 1937
201
as a 1936 total. Actually, the association
admitted to its circle, in 1936, 1156 neo-
phytes instead of the 715 noted by The
Survey.
People and Things
TPHE Consumers' National Federation,
a clearing house to coordinate con-
sumer protective activities recently was
formed. Helen Hall, president of the Na-
tional Federation of Settlements is chair-
man of the new organization; Persia
Campbell, economist, is executive secre-
tary; Robert Lynd, of Columbia Univer-
sity, vice-chairman ; and Benson Y. Landis,
of the Federal Council of Churches,
treasurer. A major purpose will be "to
establish criteria by which bona-fide con-
sumer organizations may be identified."
In general the organization will act as a
central body for the consumer organiza-
tions which affiliate with it and will con-
duct a general educational and informa-
tion service on consumer problems.
New Jobs — Elizabeth J. Mundie, local
director of Girl Scouts for Chicago since
1929, this fall will become director of
Region II, New York and New Jersey,
with headquarters at the national office
in New York. . . . Beginning forty-two
years ago as a student kindergartener at
Hull House, Gertrude Britton has made
a large contribution to Chicago social
work. This year she is retiring after
twelve years' service as executive secre-
tary of the Chicago Heart Association,
but has been given the title of 'executive
director emeritus" by the board of the
association which in 1922 she helped to
organize.
Michael M. Davis, widely known as
director for medical services of the Julius
Rosenwald Fund, recently moved from
Chicago to 9 Rockefeller Plaza, New
York, to open an office for the Committee
on Research and Medical Economics, of
which he is chairman. The committee
recently received a five-year grant from
the Julius Rosenwald Fund to pursue
studies in this field in which Mr. Davis
long has been interested.
The Rev. A. J. Muste, field and in-
dustrial secretary of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation and former head of the
Brookwood Labor College at Katonah,
N. Y., has been named director of the
Presbyterian Labor Temple of New
York, to succeed the late Rev. Edmund
Chaffee. . . . The Rev. Harry J. Pearson,
for ten years in charge of the Mariner's
Church in Detroit, and organizer of the
Episcopal City Mission there, is now
director of social welfare for the Sea-
men's Church Institute of New York.
Marjoriedel Hubers, new staff secre-
tary of the Chicago Council of Social
Agencies' section on nursery care, comes
fiom Buffalo, N. Y., where she was re-
gional supervisor of fourteen emergency
nursery schools. . . Imogene Poole Cal-
laway is the new executive of the Asso-
ciated Charities of San Antonio, Tex.,
succeeding Maud Dee who resigned on
account of illness. . . . Mary J. Cronin
has been appointed deputy institutions
commissioner for Boston, Mass, in charge
of the child welfare division of the city
Department of Welfare.
Jamboree — This month a new migra-
tion of American boys will move on
Washington, D.C. — twenty-five thousand
Boy Scouts of America on their way to
their first national "jamboree," to be held
June 30-July 9. The scouts have been
given the personal invitation of Presi-
dent Roosevelt. They will be quartered
upon land "furnished" by courtesy of the
Congress, upon the shores of the Potomac
and under the shadow of the Washington
monument. Dr. James E. West, for
twenty-seven years chief scout executive,
will be Jamboree camp chief and is di-
recting the erection of the huge 'city
under canvas." Scouts from twenty-four
foreign countries, Hawaii, Puerto Rico,
the Philippines and the Canal Zone are
expected.
Public Office— Dr. H. E. Chamberlain
from the University of Chicago has been
appointed consultant in psychiatry in the
California State Department of Social
Welfare, to assist in the organization of
child welfare services "in relation to
home, school and community life."
A key post in child welfare in New
York goes to Grace A. Reeder, who re-
cently resigned as director of the child
welfare division of the Welfare Council
of New York City. She will be director
of the Bureau of Child Welfare in the
reorganized New York State Department
of Social Welfare.
Other recent professional appointments
under the new New York State set-up
[see The Survey April 15 lj»37,page 120]
include: Abbott Ingalls, a district social
worker under the former New York
Temporary Emergency Relief Adminis-
tration, who will be general assistant to
Commissioner David C. Adie; Glenn
Jackson, formerly assistant executive di-
rector of TERA who will direct the
bureau of public assistance; Fred Schu-
macher formerly of TERA who will di-
rect home relief; Richard W. Wallace
to direct old age assistance; Gladys Fish-
er from the Westchester County, N. Y.
Department of Welfare who will be
administrative officer of the department
of old age assistance; James H. Foster,
.if the state department who will continue
as assistant commissioner and will direct
aid to dependent children; Harry Hirsch,
also an assistant commissioner who will
be in charge of "state and Indian poor."
Under the new plan of division by area
offices, up-state area directors will be
Patrick A. Tompkins for Albany, Royal
C. Ague for Binghamton, Harold S. Tol-
ley for Buffalo, Alden A. Bevier for
Rochester, Paul W. Guyler for Syracuse,
H. Sherbourne House for the suburbs of
New York City.
Health Workers-Robert W. Osborn
has come back to the State Committee on
Tuberculosis of the New York State
Charities Aid Association as assistant
executive secretary, after some years with
the Buffalo Tuberculosis Association.
Mr. Osborn was administrative assistant
of the committee, 1924-30. Janet A. Scott
succeeds Mr. Osborn as executive secre-
tary of the Buffalo Tuberculosis Associa-
tion, where she has been health education
director.
.Carl O. Lathrop of Kenmore, N. Y.,
is the new executive of the Niagara Coun-
ty Health Association, succeeding Mar-
garet Newman, now associated with the
social security program in Pennsylvania.
. . . Dr. Conrad S. Sommer from the In-
stitute for Juvenile Research of Chicago
has been appointed medical director of the
Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene. . . .
Dr. Lowell J. Reed of the Johns Hopkins
School of Hygiene and Public Health has
been appointed dean of the school, suc-
ceeding Dr. Allen W. Freeman.
Dr. H. E. Kleinschmidt, of the Na-
tional Tuberculosis Association, is now on
leave of absence to direct public health
training for the New York City Health
Department. His "university" of 2500
students will include the entire personnel
of the department. . . . Amelia J. Masso-
pust, formerly director of social service at
Bellevue Hospital, New York, has been
appointed director of social service for
the city's Department of Hospitals.
At Home and Abroad — The Ameri-
can Home Economics Association will
meet June 21-25 in Kansas City, Mo. . . .
The Youth Council of the National As-
sociation for the Advancement of Colored
People will meet in Detroit June 29-
July 4, for its annual conference.
The fifth international hospital con-
gress will be held in Paris, July 5-12. . . .
The World Federation of Education As-
sociations will meet August 2-7 in Tokyo,
Japan, for its seventh biennial congress.
The Junior Red Cross Regional Confer-
ence for Far Eastern countries immedi-
ately precedes the federation meeting. . . .
Le Congres International de la Protec-
tion de 1' Enfance will meet in Paris
July 19-22. . . . Plans are beng made for
;:n international health congress in New
York in connection with the 1939 World's
Fair. The congress will be sponsored
jointly by the National Health Council
and the advisory committee on medicine
and public health for the fair.
202
THE SURVEY
Readers Write
General Headache
To THE EDITOR: In The Survey of
March 1937, page 81, you quote the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, apropos of Head-
ache in Missouri, that "Missouri poli-
ticians have transformed a finely humani-
tarian movement into an ugly racket.
And the unfortunate result is that the
really deserving old people are not get-
ting the $30 a month which the law
calls for, but about $11 a month . . .
to keep body and soul together."
Let us be realistic. Where are really
deserving old people getting "the $30 a
month which the law calls for?"
In Monmouth County, N. J. — one of
the richest counties in one of the richest
states in the whole United States — really
deserving old people are getting average
old age allowances of $16.38 monthly in
winter, around $13 monthly in summer.
Even the average of $16.38 monthly
does not represent the situation fairly as
the majority of these old people are ex-
isting on $12 to $14 monthly, with no
other sources of income or supplementary
aid. They are compelled to pick up coal
along railroad tracks, to beg for cast-off
clothing or to depend upon private social
agencies for supplementary aid.
They receive actually less than the
allowance for. single persons granted by
many New Jersey overseers of the poor.
The local overseer allows $27.30 for a
dependent single person. A decent ex-
istence for a single person with no other
resources, requires a budget of at least
$30 monthly. And the cost of living is
higher in New Jersey than in Missouri
and many other states.
What can be done about it?
We suggest that, as a first step, your
caption read Headache over the U.S.A.
LILA B. TERHUNE
Executive Secretary, Long Branch, N. J.
Public Welfare Society
Gover'ment Layette
To THE EDITOR: We have not had a gov-
er'ment cow comparable to the one re-
ported by Louis Towley [see Survey
Graphic, December 1936, page 647] but
we have a surplus commodity layette
which was the cause of a good deal of
distress to the conscientious young gentle-
man in charge of a local distributing unit.
As witness his memo on the subject:
'To: Unit Supervisor Social Service.
From: Unit Supervisor of Commodities.
Re your letter 23 inst, subject — Alfonso
Gonzalo. According to my records Al-
fonso Gonzalo case No. SW 1419 is
opened for foodstuffs and clothing and no
question is raised on this point. However
JUNE 1937
Mrs. Gonzalo called recently and asked
to be listed for a layette. I checked her
form PA-29 and found no remarks that
would indicate that she expects to be
confined in the near future. From a
casual and discreet observation I could
not justify that it was a case for imme-
diate attention, 1 told the lady that I
had to limit myself to members of her
family only as otherwise I would be ex-
ceeding my authority, but if she desired
to call on you and if you authorized me
to increase her family members or to
list for a layette, that would be enough
to clear me in a future audit. This morn-
ing the lady called again and I wrote
on a slip, 'This certifies that Mrs. Gon-
zalo will be confined in the near future.'
I told her that if she would get her
attending physician, midwife or clinic
nurse to sign it I would be glad to list
her. The tendency of every woman in
that condition is to make preparation
long ahead of the time. I do not know
if a relief client has that privilege or
not and I am anxious to have a ruling
on the subject. I also believe that some
one, physician, midwife or clinic nurse,
should decide when to issue a layette or
you may send an unofficial slip saying
that in your opinion it is necessary if
you do not care to order me to insert the
remarks on form PA-29.
"On March 17 Mr. Jesus Francisco
called and requested a layette. I told him
they were not made yet but if he would
secure someone in authority to certify
that it was a needy case that I would be
glad to list him. In less than one hour
he brought back a certificate from the
nurse of the county health unit stating
that his wife would be confined during
April. This I consider official and elimi-
nates fraud or hoarding.
"You know well that no lady cares to
be questioned on the subject except by
a professional and the method that I
have suggested is simple and decent. I
will do nothing that may be construed as
an abuse of power or careless procedure."
KATHLEEN RANDOLPH
Florida State Board of Social Welfare
Well Remembered
To THE EDITOR: We readers of The
Survey rejoiced over the verdict of the
Supreme Court in the Washington State
Minimum Wage case. In allocating
credit for this timely establishment in
our government of the principle under-
lying the sustained law let us not forget
our indebtedness to the late Mrs.
Florence Kelley, a contributing editor of
The Survey. There was something in
her tutoring which made it mandatory
for us to keep pressing on, once our facts
justified our conclusions. It will be re-
membered that she was for years the
chief proponent of minimum wage legis-
lation and was the general director of
the National Consumers' League, which
sponsored and drafted the bills and de-
voted its funds and energies to factual
briefs in their defense in state and fed-
eral courts. When a young co-worker —
for such she always called us in her
warm generosity — once showed tail and
a bit of weakness, Mrs. Kelley very
philosophically asserted that our defeat
could be but temporary for undoubtedly
there would come a depression which
would demonstrate anew the necessity
for the law, and bring a reversal from
the Supreme Court. For those not too
close to the facts, may I point out that
whereas the latter prediction is clear to
him who runs, the former is there for
him who reads. Says the Court, "What
these workers lose in wages, the taxpay-
ers are called upon to pay. The bare cost
of living must be met. We may take
judicial notice of the unparalleled de-
mands for relief which arose during the
recent period of depression and still con-
tinue to an alarming extent, despite the
degree of economic recovery which has
been achieved. It is unnecessary to cite
official statistics to establish what is of
common knowledge through the length
and breadth of the land. While in the
instant case no factual brief has been
presented, there is no reason to doubt
that the State of Washington has en-
countered the same social problem that
is present elsewhere. The community is
not bound to provide what is in effect
a subsidy for unconscionable employers.
The community may direct its law-
making power to correct the abuse
which springs from their selfish disre-
gard of the public interest."
New York ESTELLE LAUDER
Regrets Are Mutual
To THE EDITOR: In the beginning of the
depression The Survey printed an article
by a social worker who lost her job, used
up her savings, but was confident she
would never become a case number. But
she did and her feeling can be understood
only by another ex-social worker (mostly
voluntary) who was equally confident
that, "It couldn't happen to me."
But it has — and I no longer have money
for my subscription to The Survey or for
many other things which an American
should have — most of all the fierce inde-
pendence I once knew.
Sara, the Gover'ment Cow, in the De-
cember Graphic, was worth the whole
year's subscription price — only victims of
SERA can understand that, especially
those "who knew it could never happen
to them." I regret that I cannot renew.
California B. M. s.
203
Book Reviews
Middletown Revisited
MIDDLETOWN IN TRANSITION. A STUDY
IN CULTURAL CONFLICTS, by Robert S. Lynd
and Helen Merrell Lynd. Harcourt Brace. 622
pp. Price $5 postpaid of The Survey.
\ GAIN the Lynds have held the can-
** did camera up to Muncie (Indiana),
and as some pessimists would believe, to
America. In this second sociological por-
trait of a community we find Muncie, or
Middletown, a little older, a little larger,
but no wiser than it was a dozen years
earlier. It is, indeed, a marvelous pic-
ture, done with beautifully dispassionate
frankness, richer in detail and warmer
in color and tone than its predecessor,
the famous Middletown. The Lynds have
not only improved their own technique
of community portraiture, but have had
the great advantage of previous ac-
quaintance with their subject, so that this
time, more nearly than before, they have
caught its spirit as well as its lineaments.
In short, a livelier and maturer master-
piece.
The gist of their findings as sociologists
is that Middletown overwhelmingly is
living by the values by which it lived
when the first survey was made. From
the depression, regarded as "just a bad
bump in the road," nothing seems to have
been learned; no essential change has
taken place in the local folkways, be-
liefs and attitudes; no major new symbols
have been developed. In spite of all the
strange and startling happenings of the
depression period — even in Muncie —
Middletown's social and economic credo,
like its religion, is still strongly Funda-
mentalist. The prevailing ideology re-
mains that of the ruling business class
— of Main Street, Zenith and Babbitt,
with more than a little intimation of
It Can't Happen Here. Not to mention,
as part of this thought pattern, such
gospel truths as those of the McGuffey
Readers, the Horatio Alger stories and
The Red Network.
There have been changes, though not
in ideas. The population has increased
from 35,000 to 50,000. A number of new
industries have come to Middletown be-
cause of the inducement of low wages,
long hours and the almost complete sub-
missiveness of the labor supply. The
workers for the most part continue to
think that the blessings of life flow
chiefly from the men of wealth and the
employers, even though they got a little
taste under the New Deal of the bene-
fits of governmental action. Apparently
they believe in the open shop as devoutly
as the Chamber of Commerce. Thus they
have emerged from the experiences of
recent years of boom, depression and re-
covery with virtually no leadership and
no sense of class solidarity or the possi-
bilities of group action in their own
behalf. They may wish to rise, but in the
good old fashioned way, by individual am-
bition and merit.
Social distinctions have sharpened, es-
pecially at the boundary line formed by
the railroad tracks which bisect the city.
Opportunity in other respects has nar-
rowed. Even membership in the Rotary
club is tending to become hereditary.
Getting and holding a job depends more
and more on having the right opinions
and beliefs, or none at all, or on keep-
ing them to oneself. Middletown's fear-
fulness has increased, until on occasion it
amounts to a state of jitters: fear of
centralizing tendencies in government, of
social legislation, of labor organization
(the CIO in particular), of radical
ideas; "fear by laborers of joining unions
lest they lose their jobs; fear by office
holders wanting honest government of
being framed by politicians ; fear by every-
one to show one's hand, or to speak out."
Rightly, the authors of Middletown in
Transition have devoted a whole chapter
to the pervasive, controlling influence of
the "X family" of manufacturers and
philanthropists — namely, the Balls — in
the community life. The degree and extent
of their domination of business and in-
dustry, of schools and churches, of news-
papers and welfare agencies in Muncie
has not been exaggerated by the Lynds,
who give full credit to the kindly virtues
and thorough well-meaningness of the
reigning family. The reviewer wonders,
however, if the ramifying power of this
family does not signify something be-
sides the business class control which it
is supposed merely to typify. In Muncie
people speak, in careful confidence, of
"this feudal barony."
Another query that might be raised is
how many American communities are so
nearly without articulate dissent and
audible liberalism as the Muncie which
is here described as Middletown, and
how many have succeeded so well in
keeping themselves unspotted from the
outside world of liberal ideas and move-
ments. If Middletown were America, or
rather if America were Middletown,
there would be no class conscious labor
movement, no workers' education, no
open discussion of controversial issues (on
both or all sides), no youth movements
or even forums where established in-
stitutions and accepted ways are ques-
tioned. They wouldn't be allowed. We
should not merely discern a trend toward
fascism (under some other name), we
should actually be living under a fascistic
regime, albeit a benevolent one.
Because the reader of Middletown in
Transition will recognize many familiar
and largely discouraging trends and
tendencies of American life, he may too
readily jump to the conclusion that this
is America. There is an America that
Middletown represents, but there is an-
other America — bolder in questioning,
more imaginative in action, more promis-
ing for the solution of the problems posed
by change and conflict in the different
parts of our material and spiritual cul-
ture. After all, even the employers of
this America have learned something
from the depression and its attendant
events, as may be seen today by reading
the newspapers. RAYMOND G. FULLER
Newtown, Conn.
Credit Unions, Limited
COOPERATIVE CONSUMER CREDIT
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CREDIT
UNIONS, by M. R. Neifeld. Harper. 223
pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
'"PHIS interesting volume traces briefly
the development of cooperative con-
sumer credit. The author mentions the
forerunners of cooperative credit asso-
ciations, beginning with Raifeisen and
Schultze of Germany, the later rise of
cooperative credit in Canada under the
leadership of Alphonse Desjardins, and
the work of Edward A. Filene in pro-
moting the credit unions of the United
States.
Comprehensive descriptions of credit
unions in the rural areas of America,
among employes of various government
units, in big industries, in church parishes
and so on, are given. The book recounts
the history, philosophy, machinery and
statistical growth of credit unions and
shows their proper place in the consumer
cooperative movement.
Characteristic of the book is its rather
vigorous deflation of the claims of those
credit union promoters who find in them
an agency capable of serving almost all
the credit and banking needs of people
of small incomes. Mr. Neifeld considers
that credit unions have proved unsuc-
cessful when the membership has been
expanded beyond groups that have close
acquaintance and maintain face to face
relationships. He points out the weak-
nesses of "open" unions, and claims that
the low rates which credit unions are able
to offer are due largely to the free ser-
vice given by union officers. Without the
active interest and democratic participa-
tion of members, he says, credit unions
that succeed financially tend to become
dishonestly managed and those that are
not making money die for lack of interest.
While allowing that credit unions are
very useful, Mr. Neifeld believes that
they are adapted only to a limited field
of operation and by no means furnish
a complete substitute for such forms of
204
consumer credit as the Morris Plan
banks and the small loan companies that
lend on household furniture and valu-
ables. Although these forms of consumer
credit, functioning side by side with
credit unions, have greatly surpassed
them in volume of business done, the
author points out, no substantial effort
has been made to establish a cooperative
basis for them. L. A. HALBERT
Washington Consumers Club
Washington, D. C.
Intimations of Importance
FACTORS DETERMINING HUMAN BE-
HAVIOR: Harvard Tercentenary Publication
No. I. Harvard University Press. 168 pp.
Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
HPO this first publication of the three
symposia of the Harvard Conference
of Arts and Sciences in 1936, we natu-
rally turn with great interest. Because
of the importance of the occasion, we
know that this small volume must rep-
resent the most mature thought of the
contributors. Eight addresses were given
in this series by a cosmopolitan group.
Only a hint of their content can be given
within the limitations of reviewing space.
The nervous system and the endocrine
organs as factors in behavior receive
short attention through articles by Adrian
of England and Collip of Montreal.
They could do little more than suggest
the importance of the researches being
developed in their fields. Piaget of Geneva
offers his conception of determinants of
intellectual evolution in the child. Jung
surveys some theoretical and phenomenal
considerations of the psychological fac-
tors in human behavior, with emphasis
upon the groups of instincts and the way
in which they work. Janet has a con-
siderably longer paper entitled, Psycho-
logical Strength and Weakness in Men-
tal Diseases. As a matter of fact, he
deals with and gives many illustrations
of conditions of psychological weakness
in those who are not mentally diseased.
To the reviewer it seems curious that
he entirely neglects one part of his sub-
ject, namely, psychological strength. Logic
as a determinant of behavior is rather
discredited by Carnap, formerly of
Prague. He discerns clearly that men
are more dominated by their passions
than by their reason. Lowell, president
emeritus of Harvard, draws upon his-
tory for material demonstrating that men
may attain a self-consistent and harmoni-
ous system of conducting their affairs,
"if conditions happen to be just right."
In his conclusions he seems to be back-
ing and filling not a little, but perhaps
justifiably. Malinowsky of London,
anthropologist, gives a number of illus-
trations of how culture determines be-
havior, and argues that in modern society
the machine has been allowed to over-
power man. "Our present situation is
undoubtedly passing through a very
In answering
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
A Significant Publication in the Field of Community Life
NEW AMERICANS IN ALLEGHENY COUNTY
A Cultural Study
by MARY E. HURLBUTT
This pamphlet comes at a time when the interest of social workers in the
cultural and psychological background of nationality groups is being increas-
ingly aroused. The contents include interviews revealing attitudes both of our
older population and our new, also chapters on Population Trends, Nationality
Communities, Citizenship Training, Naturalization, Case Work for the Foreign
Born Family, and The Program oj International Institutes.
114 pages.
per copy.
Order from
THE SURVEY, BOOK DEPARTMENT
112 East 19th Street, New York, N. Y.
THE NEW YORK SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
BOOKS
Every Social 'Worker Should Own
"// a small portion oj the amounts now spent upon the upkeep oj prisons,
reform schools and mental hospitals were applied to child guidance, it would
go a long way toward making such institutions unnecessary and saving innum-
erable broken lives as well," say the authors, Wexberg and Fritsch, in
OUR CHILDREN IN A CHANGING WORLD
written from the viewpoint that children are neither good nor bad; they are
simply human beings with certain inherent instincts, desires and capabilities
welded with experience and training to form a final pattern of personality. $2.00
Burrow's
THE BIOLOGY OF HUMAN CONFLICT
Curing the neurotic individual who is "unable to make the grade" cannot solve
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Appel-Strecker's
PRACTICAL EXAMINATION OF PERSONALITY AND
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Gives the actual technique for conducting an interview. "... One of the few
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in eliciting the facts." $2.00
THE MACMIIAAN COMPANY
Publishers
New York
HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL WORK ENGINEERING
By JUNE PURCELL GUILD and ARTHUR ALDEN GUILD
A book valuable to public welfare workers, social case workers,
medical workers, and those employed in other fields of social work
by providing methods of organizing to meet the social problems of
their communities. Agency board members join professional social
workers in proclaiming Social Work Engineering as something new
in the field of social organization and financial support, practical,
readable, authoritative.
$1.50 prepaid from The Survey
advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
205
severe, perhaps a critical, stage of mal-
adjustment"; but, he thinks, we may yet
hope that the spirit of science will pre-
vail in the conduct of human affairs.
The reviewer in the interest of his own
craft has read most of this little book
a second time and expects to come back
to it again — perhaps this proves its sig-
nificance. WILLIAM HEALY, M.D.
Judge Baker Foundation
Cum Laude
APPLIED DIETETICS, by Frances Stern.
Williams and Wilkins. 263 ]>p. Price $3.50
postpaid of The Survey.
T N my perusal of many books I have
found none like Applied Dietetics.
The scientific facts are clearly, briefly
and accurately stated. The tables and
charts are excellent and should prove of
great help to those in the field of prac-
tical dietetics and to those whose duties
involve the simplification of the field of
nutrition. The time, labor and effort
that has gone toward the building of
this book are readily apparent in the
carefully worked out and clearly ex-
pressed charts and tables. This is an
admirable summary of information based
on years of work, tireless effort and a
thorough acquaintance with available
literature. E. V. McCoLLUM
Department of biochemistry,
Johns Hopkins University
A Hard Road to Travel
SOCIAL TREATMENT IN PROBATION
AND DELINQUENCY, by Pauline V. Young,
McGraw-Hill. 646 pp. Price $4 postpaid of
The Suney.
HERE are two kinds of people,
both making valuable contributions
towards the control of juvenile and adult
delinquency in this country. In the first
group are those intrepid souls who have
joined the ranks of actual workers in the
fields of social work, probation and in-
stitution management. The other group
consists of students, college professors,
social surveyors and office workers who
sit on the side lines or in their profes-
sorial chairs and tell the first group how
it should be done. The persons in this
latter group are intelligent, public spirited
and possessed of a real desire to bring
order out of chaos in a very difficult field.
They have naturally, in recent years,
brought dismay and discouragement to
those in the first group. We have had sur-
veys which have successfully demonstrated
the failure, first, of our prisons, then in
turn of our reformatories, training
schools, juvenile courts, social case work
agencies and group work agencies. We
could be pardoned for thinking that many
of our efforts in the prevention of juvenile
delinquency are wholly futile. Quite re-
cently a study by the U. S. Children's
Bureau concerned itself with the adjust-
ment in the cases of 751 boys who have
been released from five training schools
T
in this country. The persons who devel-
oped this study were obviously charitably
inclined and yet they could only point
to a successful adjustment of about one
third of these boys. In the case of at
least three of these five schools, the in-
stitution was presided over by men who
were generally regarded as leaders in
their field. If such men cannot succeed,
there are those who are ready to pre-
dict that success is impossible.
We may hazard such an opinion as a
result of the Glueck study of the Boston
juvenile court and the Healy clinic cases.
In all these social studies the critic points
out in a manner which seems reasonable
enough the defects in the procedures
which he has studied. He suggests the
thought that after all perhaps the task
was impossible and our communities
must be entirely reorganized before any
of the more orthodox instruments for
individual social rehabilitation can func-
tion adequately. Roscoe Pound in his
penetrating foreword to Mrs. Young's
book puts his finger upon the outstand-
ing difficulty of expecting law enforce-
ment or police activity and social or
remedial case work from one and the
same agency.
Inevitably therefore the demand is
made for a more Social Treatment in
Probation and Delinquency. Pauline V.
Young of the University of Southern
California takes this exact title for a
treatise intended as a handbook for those
who work with young offenders. As such
it is a valuable piece of work. It pro-
ceeds upon the case method made famous
a generation or two ago by the Harvard
Law School, and in addition to actual
cases discusses the many and abstruse
aspects of work with juvenile delinquents.
To the general student of modern so-
ciological questions, there is much to pon-
der in this volume. Can we combine that
kind of procedure which the Anglo-Saxon
has come to regard as fundamental to
our civilization, namely the trial of a
case in court, with the somewhat incon-
sistent procedure known as individual
case work? After presenting in Part I
the new method of approach in the han-
dling of a juvenile offender, Mrs. Young
discusses the possibility of individualizing
justice and socializing court procedure.
She then makes these rather, general
terms clearer by applying them to life
studies.
We can well make the plea that the
probation officer or the institution
worker needs all the sympathy and sup-
port and assistance that we can give. Mrs.
Young comes to the same conclusions we
must all reach: that in the long run the
utilization of all community resources
will more surely prevent crime and that
work with unadjusted youth and parents
will more surely succeed as we modify
the deleterious neighborhood environ-
ment. Nevertheless many an underpriv-
ileged boy has risen above his environment
and many a more fortunately placed
youngster has become a social problem.
After coordinating councils have improved
our neighborhoods, the probation officer
will still be struggling with the case of
the individual delinquent.
New York SANFORD BATES
Practical Handbook
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, by C. M. Louttit,
with a Foreword by L. T. Meiks. Harper. 695
pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
T NTENDED as a textbook of clinical
' psychology, this is a practical hand-
book for students of children's behavior
problems. The author recognizes that
clinical psychology draws its data and
methods from psychology, medicine, edu-
cation and sociology. With this point of
view, he presents diagnostic methods and
analyzes problems related to special abil-
ities and disabilities. The discussions of
human behavior and personality disorders
are based upon present concepts con-
cerning functional and organic disorders.
IRA S. WILE, M.D.
Lessons in Labor
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN THE SAN
FRANCISCO BUILDING TRADES. by
Frederick L. Ryan. University of Oklahoma
Press. 241 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The Sur-
vey.
I_J ERE is an excellent study of labor
relations in the San Francisco build-
ing trades and an invaluable contribu-
tion to the history of unionism in the
United States Mr. Ryan has done a
workman-like job in describing the polit-
ical and economic factors which led to
the downfall of the once powerful San
Francisco Building Trades Council.
The volume holds a pertinent and
timely lesson for those who cling to a
belief in the virtues of horizontal union-
ism and who look upon autocratic con-
trol of union affairs as the best means
of achieving unity among organized
workers. Chapters IV and V detail the
petty jurisdictional disputes between the
several crafts which caused constant
bickering among the unions in the coun-
cil and which were in large measure re-
sponsible for the rise of the San Francisco
Industrial Association, arch enemy of
organized labor in that city.
The following pithy paragraph epito-
mizes some of the author's principal
findings:
"It seems clear, from the above de-
scription, that the craft type of organi-
zation, and the policy of collaboration
between the unions' leaders and the em-
ployers, created disunion politically as
well as industrially. The dictum of re-
warding labor's friends and defeating
labor's enemies resulted in labor's ulti-
mate defeat. The voting strength of one
union was nullified by the opposing votes
206
THE SURVEY
of another. Even when candidates were
elected, no united pressure forced them
to act in labor's interests. It seems clear,
also that an industrial form of organiza-
tion would have prevented the splitting
tactics of politicians, and would have pro-
vided the united force that was necessary
to have measures favorable to labor
adopted."
Mr. Ryan certainly has no illusions
about the "impartiality" of the San Fran-
cisco Industrial Association with regard
to unionism. The present reviewer, who
has had ample opportunity to watch the
policies and activities of this employers'
organization, concurs that to this asso-
ciation a good union is a weak union
and a dead union the acme of perfec-
tion.
The reviewer is not as optimistic about
the outlook for the future as is the
author, who sees in the present rank
and file movement an indication of the
development of industrial unionism and
political unity in the San Francisco build-
ing trades. He may be right; but have
the old leaders, many of whom are still
at the helm of the building trades unions,
learned the lessons of the past which this
book so well depicts?
Washington, D. C. Louis BLOCK
Half a Task
THE TEACHING OF CONTROVERSIAL
SUBJECTS, by Edward L. Thorndike. Har-
vard University Press. 39 pp. Price $1 post-
paid of The Survey.
TT is to be hoped that Professor
Thorndike will not regard this all
too brief statement (the Inglis Lecture,
1937) as a sufficient contribution to an
important and difficult subject. For he
raises serious doubts as to the adequacy
of his approach to it. After giving un-
deserved comfort to those who would
avoid the teaching of controversial sub-
jects, he suggests that training students
for weighing conflicting arguments means
primarily teaching them how to identify
the expert.
"In men of high ability," we are told,
"the harm done by partiality is less than
the good done by intimate knowledge."
Since, however, "popular preachers,
novelists, politicians and bureaucrats" are
to be guarded against, there remain more
or less undisputed in the seats of author-
ity the professional tools of vested inter-
ests. This appalling conclusion is reached
by a reasoning which leaves out of ac-
count the pedagogical values of classroom
exercises in tracing conflicting statements
and proposals to their roots in probable
motivations and attitudes.
The task for the educator is only half
done when he has shown how to weight
in relation to established facts the
credibility of statements for or against
a given proposition. The job which re-
mains is to sensitize the students to a
recognition of the policies and outlooks
on life that underlie the arguments. The
student's business is not so much to
decide between conflicting views, as to
understand the differences in feeling as
well as in factual knowledge from which
they spring.
New York BRUNO LASKER
Facts — Not Arguments
INTERRACIAL JUSTICE: A STUDY OF THE
CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF RACE RELATIONS, by
John LaFarge. S.J. America Press. 226 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
XT O ONE is better qualified than
Father LaFarge to discuss the
Catholic attitude on race relations. For
many years he was pastor in charge of a
Negro church. More recently, as asso-
ciate editor of America, he has had wide
contacts with outstanding Negro leaders
as well as with white persons interested
in racial problems. With this background,
Father LaFarge has achieved a dispas-
sionate and factual survey of the Amer-
ican Negro, his problems and their solu-
tions. The tone of the book is not
controversial. Father LaFarge does not
argue; he gives facts. "I have not so
much tried to persuade people to walk
on a certain road, as to show them the
road that I am convinced they are sooner
or later going to walk on," he explains.
Although Interracial Justice is written
primarily for Catholics, certainly 90 per-
cent of the material will be equally use-
ful to others. PAUL HANLY FURFEY
Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.
Handle with Care
THE NURSERY YEARS, by Susan Isaacs.
Vanguard. 138 pp. Price $1 postpaid of The
Survey.
HP HE Nursery Years is a very read-
able little book. One would like to
recommend it to all parents of young
children because of its many common
sense points of view, its numerous prac-
tical suggestions, and the author's
genuine ability to present scientific mate-
rial in a form that is interesting and easy
to read. But in spite of these good char-
acteristics one hesitates to urge parents
to read this little book without careful
warnings.
In the first place, the author fails to
distinguish for her readers between facts
gathered by careful experimentation
(that is, the findings of genuine re-
search) and the hypotheses or the prin-
ciples which, although they may be based
upon experience, nevertheless are still
unproved hypotheses. She presents some
most challengeable interpretations of the
behavior of young children along with
such data as the specific norms of de-
velopment determined by Dr. Arnold
Gesell through long and careful research
experimentation, as if the two kinds of
material were objective facts of equal
dependability.
Second, the author has obviously ac-
cepted all the fundamental hypotheses of
the psychoanalytic school and proceeds to
explain the behavior of young children
on these assumptions, presenting them
not as theories but as facts. She has
done this so generally and uncritically
throughout her book that one who has
not accepted psychoanalytic theory in
toto is forced to disagree with her on
many vital points. For example, almost
anyone experienced in the handling of
young children and familiar with mental
hygiene principles will agree that when
one finds the child of three or four play-
ing with his genital organ one does
nothing about it directly. But certainly
many will not agree that the small
child's masturbation is caused by his
"struggle to overcome his desire for ab-
solute possession of his mother, and his
sense of rivalry with his otherwise loved
father."
In spite of these weaknesses, The
Nursery Years represents an excellent
exposition of many common sense prin-
ciples and some ascertained facts regard-
ing modern child training and has much
to offer the parent who will not be too
gullible in accepting everything the au-
thor says. ETHEL KAWIN
Psychologist, Laboratory Schools
University of Chicago
Infant Profession
HOUSING MANAGEMENT, by Beatrice G.
Rosahn and Abraham Goldfeld. Covici-Friede.
414 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The Survey.
TPHE first book to be devoted to the
pioneer field of public housing man-
agement in this country, this volume de-
scribes a new profession in the making
and treats its distinct philosophy, ethics
and techniques.
"Public housing management is more
than the mere operation of commercial
buildings; more than a social worker's
effort to rehabilitate unadjusted or un-
educated families; more than the intro-
duction of a recreation program ; and
more than the cultivation of public in-
terest in a community undertaking. It
is, in varying degrees, a combination of
these."
In these words the authors lay out the
area of their discussion. They draw upon
actual managerial experience for a prac-
tical analysis of administration, includ-
ing the selection and placement of
tenants, building maintenance and com-
munity activities.
The reader is advised to turn first to
the section on community activities, for
this reveals the very essence of the book
— the manager's relations to tenants, in-
dividually and in groups. Here is found
an illustration of democracy applied to
daily living. As interpreted by these
authors, the tenant-manager relationship
JUNE 1937
207
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
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ALGONQUIN 4-7490 OUKVCI 1V11I_-UY1^U> 1 n.L I NEW YORK CITY
WORKERS WANTED
Jewish woman 35-40. Supervisory-Cottage Mother
duties. Salary plus maintenance. 4225 Burl-
ingame, Detroit, Michigan.
Medical Social Case Worker, graduate of a
recognized school of social work. Salary $160
month. 7432 Survey.
SITUATIONS WANTED
DIRECTOR OF BOYS' INSTITUTION desires
change of position beginning September. Ex-
perience in group work, community centre
activities, camping and case work. College
graduate, social work training. Progressive
education viewpoint. 7422- Survey.
Man under thirty. Recreation work or teaching
in recreation center, school or camp. Qualified
to direct playground ; sports including base-
ball, basketball, wrestling, track and swim-
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MISCELLANEOUS
Believing some men and women are burdened,
anxious, needing help in meeting perplexing
personal problems, a retired physician offers
friendly counsel for those who desire it. No
tees. 7419 Survey.
ROOM FOR RENT
At 52 Gramercy Park North. Double room and
bath overlooking the Park to sublet. Un-
furnished $60 a month ; furnished $70 a month.
Rate includes maid service and telephone. For
information call PLaza 3-2396 between 9 and
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WIc. 2-84S7.
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ment of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00
a year. 50 West 50 Street, New York, N. Y.
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This is the counseling and placement agency
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to EMPLOYERS
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BAYES THEATRE
44th St., W. of B'way
Eves, at 9. BRy. 9-3648
POWER
RITZ THEATRE
48th Street, West of B'way
Evenings at 9. MEd. 3-0912
PROF. MAMLOCK
DALY'S THEATRE
63rd Street, East of Broadway
Eves, at 8:40. Circle 7-5852
PAUL GREEN PLAYS
"Hymn to the Rising Sun"
"Unto Such Glory"
ADELPHI THEATRE
54th Street, East of 7th Avenue
June 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12—8:30
Special Children's Theatre— ADELPHI Tb., 54th St., E. of 7th Av.— I5c-25c
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday at 4 P.M. Saturday Mat. at 2:30
"REVOLT OF THE BEAVERS"
becomes vital and creative of something
new. They show it wrought from actual
experience in handling human problems,
those arising from the precarious social-
economic status of many tenants of pub-
lic housing as well as the usual tenant-
management relationships.
This book is timely because it answers
the questions of those who, for the first
time, now are becoming interested in
housing. How will people who have been
accustomed to slum dwelling live in new;
modern housing? It answers the ques-
tions of those who will be responsible
for the management of new public hous-
ing. How may these houses be econom-
ically and efficiently managed, and serve
to bring about community improvement?
Commercial housing management also
will find useful suggestions of new ways
of meeting maintenance and tenant prob-
lems.
Description of detailed management
practices of nine housing projects affect-
ing tenants of different economic levels,
completes the picture of what manage-
ment means today and will mean to-
morrow to the housing program of the
nation. HARRIET TOWNSEND
Teachers College, New York
Run of the Shelves
POVERTY AND DEPENDENCY, by John
Lewis Gillin. Appleton-Century. 755 pp. Price
$4 postpaid of The Survey.
A COMPLETE revision of the well-known
text first published in 1921, together with
much new material bringing it up to date
for classroom purposes.
BOOK OF THE CAMP FIRE GIRLS. 247
pp. Price 50 cents from Camp Fire Outfitting
Co., 197 Green Street, New York.
NEW, revised edition of the handbook
and manual of the organization which,
since its founding in 1912, has had more
than two million members.
SOME AMERICAN PIONEERS IN SOCIAL
WELFARE: Selected Documents with Edi-
torial Notes by Edith Abbott. University of
Chicago Press. 189 pp. Price $1 postpaid of
The Survey.
A COLLECTION of documents related to
the beginnings of social services in this
country through the activities of Benja-
min Rush, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Eddy, Stephen Girard, Samuel Gridley
Howe, Dorothea L. Dix and Charles
Loring Brace, "pioneers with social
vision which outran the years." Appended
are two chapters: Three American Poor
Relief Documents 1870-1885, and The
First Public Welfare Associations. All
the chapters have appeared in early is-
sues of the Social Service Review and all
will be included in the volume, A Docu-
mentary History of Social Welfare in
England and America, now in prepara-
tion by Miss Abbott and her associates
in the faculty of the School of Social
Service Administration.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
208
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
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MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AUIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LA»-
HER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIPPLE, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRIGO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
JULY 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 7
In This Real World of Ours ALVIN JOHNSON 211
What About Volunteers FLORENCE LUKENS NEWBOLD 214
Employment Service — New Style ELEANOR ALLEN 216
Boarding Out Delinquent Children C. D. McNAMEE 217
Tough Facts About Hospitals MICHAEL M. DAVIS 219
"For the Good of the Cause" HELEN M. MANAHAN 221
Miss Bailey Says ...
"Mist" Harry Meets a Merit System" GERTRUDE SPRINGER 222
The Common Welfare 224
The Social Front 226
WPA— Relief . State Action • Old Age Benefits • Com-
pensation • Citizen Service • Recreation • The Public's
Health • Professional • People and Things
Readers Write 235
Book Reviews 236
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• The boy without a playground is father
to the man without a job. — JOSEPH LEE,
Boston.
• In our present ferment the people seem
more interested in the drama of experiment
than in the lessons of experience. — LEON
WHIPPLE, in Survey Graphic.
• Sometimes we wonder if it wouldn't have
been better if the earth had been made up
into a lot of smaller planets with fewer peo-
ple on each one. — Editorial, Ohio State Journal.
• A very pleasant question which we are oc-
casionally being asked now by employers is,
"How much shall I have to pay?" — EDITH
STEDMAN, director appointment bureau, Rad-
diffe College.
• Many of the oldest minds in the world, of
which by no means the least number are to
found in the United States, have not yet
reached their thirtieth birthday. — NICHOLAS
MURRAY BUTLER, president, Columbia Uni-
versity.
• The time has come when no cause can
prevail, no expert be recognized, no benefits
conferred on society by philanthropy without
the coincident use of the tools of deliberate
popular persuasion. The expert, be he doctor,
lawyer or philanthropist who ignores this fact,
is doomed. — DR. FLOYD S. WINSLOW, presi-
dent, Medical Society of the State of New
York.
So They Say
• Social work isn't everything under the
sun. — PROF. HOWARD W. ODUM, University of
North Carolina.
• A divided church has little moral authority
in a divided world. — THE REV. E. STANLEY
JONES to the Federal Council of Churches.
• There is not a single culture in the world
which we could honestly call autonomous. —
FRANZ BOAS, anthropologist, at the fourth
anniversary of The University in Exile.
• We have a great many hand-minded boys
in the colleges, and I should not be surprised
if we have some book-minded boys in the
CCC. — ROBERT M. HUTCHINS, president, Uni-
versity of Chicago.
• No one in the United States can describe
the social machinery of economic democracy
because only just now is the desire for in-
venting it being born. — HENRY A. WALLACE,
Secretary of Agriculture.
• One or two federal convictions will do
more to stop lynching than all the resolutions
passed by all the good will societies, all the
tall talk indulged in by all the humiliated
governors, and all the moral indignation re-
leased by all the uplifters. — WILLIAM ALLEN
WHITE, Kansas.
• If (housing) conferences were houses, the
underprivileged would live in palaces. — MAYOR
LA GUARDIA, New York.
• We have tried to civilize our apparatus of
living until we are well nigh civilized to death.
— THE REV. HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK, River-
side Church, New York.
• Nowadays nobody knows when a war is a
war, or when you are restoring order, or build-
ing a new Utopia and having of course to
"break a few eggs." — DOROTHY THOMPSON,
news commentator.
• I rip 'em wide open once a month and the
rest of the time I pour in oil and wine. — A
preacher's prescription for "getting by with
the social gospel" made at the National Con-
ference of the Methodist Federation for Social
Service.
• I believe that the ideas that people actu-
ally hold are no less important for a complete
understanding of economic phenomena than
the ideas which economists think they ought
to hold. — PROF. EDWIN E. WITTE, University
o' Wisconsin.
• I predict that the world's working men
and women will not forever be content to
stand by while civilized living is sacrificed on
the altar of armaments, nor longer be willing
to forge a means of their own destruction. —
EDWARD F. McGRADY, U.S. Department of
Labor, at the International Labor Confer-
ence, Geneva.
•
Fitzpatrick in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Both Going Strong
Thomas in The Detroit News
Running Away with the Leader
Qrr in the Chicago Daily
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Simple world-
eh what?
Elderman in the Washington Post
Babes in the Woods
Carraack in the Christian Science Monitor
On the Strike Front
JtJL 12 1937
THE SURVEY
JULY 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 7
In This Real World of Ours
By ALVIN JOHNSON
Director, New School of Social Research
THE Welfare Council in drawing together into a
working unity the multitudinous agencies engaged in
various forms of welfare work, is creating order in
what has always been the most chaotic and disordered divi-
sion of human affairs. Thanks to these developing activities
we shall eventually possess a fair working map of the prob-
lems of welfare as they present themselves in the greatest
city of the continent. We shall know what there is to be
done if our society is to establish a solid claim to the title
of a rational and humane civilization.
What there is to be done will foot up to enormous figures,
both in human and in financial terms. We have scarcely
touched the problem of housing for the low income classes.
Welfare agencies have deployed magnificent energies in
their efforts to awaken the public to the evils of the slums,
but the results in positive action have not been impressive.
The city still has its hundreds of thousands of children
suffering from inadequate nutrition, its tens of thousands
growing up in a condition of neglect that tends inevitably
toward delinquency and crime. We fall far short of humane
standards in our provisions for the hospitalization of the
sick, particularly the mentally sick. Our efforts to rehabili-
tate those who have fallen into crime and have paid the
penalty to the state are still mainly in the stage of promise.
We have not made very notable progress in the reeducation
for a useful place in our economic life of those whose skill
has been broken by accident or disease, or rendered obsolete
by technological advances.
These are commonplaces. But it is worth reiterating
them, in order to emphasize the point that a large core of
welfare problems remains with us, in good times as in bad.
The depression has made us more conscious of the existence
of these problems. It has height-
ened our sense of responsibility.
We shall never again be able to
lapse back into the laissez-faire
attitude of pre-depression days.
We shall never return to the
old level of public appropria-
tions. We shall never again ex-
hibit the childlike confidence in
As a social economist Mr. Johnson looks at
welfare work, "the most chaotic and disor-
dered division of human affairs," and pleads
for "rational social engineering." This ar-
ticle is drawn from an address at a meeting
of the Welfare Council of New York City.
the adequacy of private charity that even our highest politi-
cal authorities expressed in the first years of the depression.
We shall never forget that we need strong, well organized
welfare agencies, not only to handle the problems that
chronically remain with us, but to supply the trained organi-
zation needed to grapple with the problems of the next
depression. Just as we have what is, for these mad days, a
small army of regulars capable of leavening a vast army of
volunteers or conscripts in case of need, so we need to keep
up a standing welfare organization capable of extending out
its front to meet the invasion of the next depression.
TAM sorry to introduce so gloomy an idea as the next de-
-*- pression before we have unbandaged the wounds of the
last one. I am so much of an optimist that I refuse to be-
lieve that we can have so severe, so prolonged a depression
as that of 1929-36 within a space of twenty years. You can
not have a second great forest fire on the same ground until
the trees have made a certain growth and litter has accu-
mulated on the ground. You cannot have a second great
earthquake until crustal stresses have had time to accumu-
late. We shall indeed have many a minor quake, "reces-
sions," which may throw some hundreds of thousands into
temporary unemployment. Our economic balance is so deli-
cate that even a breath may produce violent oscillations,
particularly a breath from Washington. Or an evil rumor,
growing sky high in the poetic atmosphere of Wall Street.
But this gnawing remorseless monster that has been devour-
ing our substance and our hopes since 1929 we may count
as quieted for the time.
He will, however, come back. We have indeed developed
many weapons in the current depression for combating the
next one. But the next depres-
sion will come upon us with a
new offensive technique against
which the weapons of the Roose-
velt era will be like flintlocks.
I dwell upon this prospect of
a coming depression not out of
the professional economist's
dark delight in dismal con-
211
elusions, but because recognition of probable future con-
tingencies is the basis of sound strategy. I take it that
the social agencies have no ambition to live as a kind of
civil Red Cross, waiting with Christian resignation for the
casualties to be dumped into their encrimsoned lap. No :
they wish to play a part, and a significant part, in keeping
the peace, in avoiding needless casualties.
^ I AHEREFORE professional social work will strain every
JL effort to go behind the phenomena of distress to the causes
that produce them. It will recognize the obligation to sup-
ply the essential requirements of relief for the hopeless.
But it will be most deeply concerned with techniques for
reducing the number of the hopeless. It will throw all its
force on the side of a sound social engineering that grips the
causes instead of spending itself on the effects.
And, most difficult of all, social workers will recognize
that the job of lifting the mass of the disinherited to a
tolerable living level is a slow and painful job, to be done
quarter inch by quarter inch, not by ells and yards, and
that wishful thinking and hocus-pocuses never rise above
the level of private indulgence.
In this real world of ours there is, alas, not money enough
to go around. There is not one single branch of welfare
work that does not need, and could not use profitably, twice
or thrice or ten times the money it gets. Alas, we do not
as a nation produce the needed money, or what I really
mean, the money's worth in the form of the necessities and
conveniences of life. It is written, the poor always ye have
with you. We, the United States of America, said to be
rich, are really poor. Too poor to fit out our children as
we would wish.
Someone will say, we are not paying the taxes we could
afford to pay. We have forgotten the proverb, current from
1450 throughout Europe, that where the hoof of the Turk-
ish horse struck the ground, grass refused to grow. What
this meant was simply that the Turk took one tenth of
every man's product in taxation. The flourishing industry
and agriculture of Asia Minor did not die all at once. It
gradually decayed.
We are already taking in federal, state and local taxa-
tion, direct and indirect, more than the ruinous Turkish
tithe. When our income is normal, we take nearer one
sixth than the Turkish tenth. True, we can afford a heavier
tribute because we get something for our money, while the
Turks gave only oppression. Nevertheless, we are lost if
we fall generally into the delusion that the taxpaying ca-
pacity of this country is indefinite.
It will be said that we have plenty of rich wasters who
would be morally better off if we lifted the superfluous
weight of gold off their shoulders. Granted, in the individ-
ual case. The statistical case would argue that we are
already imposing about all the traffic will bear. We can
tax more heavily and find the yield less.
Public revenues will not flow much more abundantly
than they flow now until we have a more richly producing
economic system. We could produce more than we now do.
We could not realize the dreams of the technocrats, which,
like other dreams, have not one catch in them, but several.
But we could double our production, raise the standard of
living 100 percent, if every general and colonel and captain
of industry, if every sergeant and corporal and private
would do his best. So corrupt is human nature that it does
not do its best under excess of taxation.
'But someone will say this is a naive and reactionary
view. It is not necessary in an age of credit to finance wel-
fare work through oppressive taxation. The credit of gov-
ernment is virtually unlimited. Have we not borrowed
billions upon billions? And can we not still borrow at in-
credibly low rates of interest?
Moreover, has it not been proved that in this depression
for every billion of borrowed money spent by the govern-
ment some three billions have been added to the national
income?
This may be true. I am one of those who believe that the
priming of the pump is an efficient device when there is
water below and the valve is too dry. I am committed to the
view that in time of depression the government ought to
borrow freely and boldly, and put to national use the labor
and industrial power that would otherwise go over the
dam. But I am also convinced that when normal conditions
return, the chief business of the government should be to
pay off its depression debt so that it may be in a position to
meet the next depression. For unless we suddenly become
much wiser, there will infallibly be a next depression. And
this means that hosts of worthy projects of social welfare
must go over to the future for want of funds.
It also means that the social welfare agencies must join
in the revolt against conditions that unload upon them
problems for which society will not supply sufficient funds.
They must raise their voices in support of a rational social
engineering.
Consider the growth of Harlem. Here is an increasing
pressure of population, congestion, the problems of disease,
juvenile delinquency, disorder and crime that go with con-
gestion. The people of Harlem are not adequately housed.
They can not pay for adequate housing out of their wages,
meager and inadequate.
WHAT are we to do about it? Go in for subsidized
housing? Yes, if we can afford it. That is not
enough. The children need milk, green vegetables, meat.
But the meager wages of the population cannot afford these
in adequate supply. Subsidize their nutrition? Yes, if we
can afford it. Subsidize medical care. Subsidize education.
The social engineer will inquire, why do we have these
masses of population crowding into Harlem, adding their
labor force to a supply that was already superabundant,
committing themselves to starvation wages and helping to
reduce wages for other labor?
The answer is simple. They have come here, in the ma-
jority of cases, not because of the irresistible lure of the
city but because they were starved out of their home envir-
onment, in the old South, in Puerto Rico, in other West
Indian islands. And social engineering will inquire whether
this was necessary. Could not the problem of congestion in
Harlem have been met at its source, with some better plan
than a perpetual subsidy? The South, the West Indies,
including even Puerto Rico, are far from the limit of their
natural resources. There is fertile land not cultivated, or
at least not cultivated intensively. There are traditional
systems of land tenure that stand in the way of the family
that could meet its essential requirements on its own.
Would it not be more rational for social agencies to demand
of the federal government that it seek to cut off immigration
to Harlem by creating conditions under which the southern
Negro population could live in hope and comfort on south-
ern soil, rather than to ask for subsidies to house adequately
in New York a population not needed there?
To some this will sound Utopian. What land is there in
212
THE SURVEY
the South on which to plant the population now on the
wing? There are millions of acres of highly productive
land in the coastal plain, overgrown with long leaf pine
that can be rooted out by modern engineering methods at
an extremely low cost. Hundreds of thousands of families
could be planted on small farms each costing less, fully
equipped, than the construction of a decent flat in Harlem.
House and living as contrasted with an apartment and no
job, or an irregular job — would any social engineer hesitate
about the choice?
There are millions of other acres in the Middle West,
much deteriorated under extensive cultivation but capable
of restoration under a system of small intensively cultivated
holdings. Much of this land is in the hands of the govern-
ment and of the banks. A social engineer will inquire, why
under the sun do we not plant it with the millions of fami-
lies that are disillusioned with the depression ridden cities?
BUT we already have an excess of agricultural produc-
tion. Would not any such homesteading of people who
find it too hard to live in the cities aggravate the problem of
overproduction ? It is the verdict of history that overproduc-
tion attends the system of large farms, not of small ones.
The small farmer consumes a much larger proportion of his
produce when prices are low.
There can be no question that we could take tens of
thousands of families off relief permanently, if we were
willing to proceed as systematically as the Danes have pro-
ceeded, or the English in Ireland, even in their imperial
days, to plant a population on small self-sufficient farms.
Nor can there be any question that such a program could
be made self-liquidating and would not need to divert inade-
quate public funds from the inescapable requirements of
relief. Why do we do nothing about it? Because we are
hypnotized by the brilliancy of industrial progress, and are
not sufficiently familiar with social engineering to appre-
ciate the importance of a balanced state.
Social engineering will recognize also that we do not
manage our strictly urban resources as well as we should.
We faint before the problem of technological unemploy-
ment, although our history has made it clear that the periods
of most rapid technological advance have been the periods
of most general employment. If the lung power of a glass
blower has to yield to the vastly greater lung power of a
machine, if a mechanical chicken picker in a packing house
displaces sixty hand pickers, yet the industrial and commer-
cial system requires more labor, labor to bring up more
material, labor to handle and sell the product. Other labor,
however. The man who has invested his personality in
glass blowing lungs, the woman who has made a career of
pulling the feathers off chickens, are out in the cold.
They are out in the cold if that is all they are good for.
But the social engineer will consider whether w£ cannot
produce schemes of education, and reeducation, that will
yield the mobility required by a rapidly changing technique.
We need to produce more jacks-of-all-trades. And if that
smacks of cheap and nasty workmanship, let me point out
that the Anglo-American antipathy to the jack-of -all-trades
is nothing more valid than a relic of ancient guild monop-
oly. A Swedish workman will plaster your house, mend
your clock, build you an armchair, knit you a sweater and
instruct you in working class philosophy besides. And he
will do all these things well. In these days there is no sense
in a training that binds a man to an economic function that
may become obsolete at the next technological turn.
It may seem that in these humdrum suggestions of mine
I ignore the great and sovereign remedies: a better distri-
bution of wealth that will raise the standard of living of
the working class and develop the capacity of the market
for industrial products; a reduction in working hours that
will make possible the reabsorption by industry of more of
the unemployed ; and above all, our new institutions of
social security.
I do not really ignore these projects of social policy. I do
most ardently believe in the social beneficence of high wages
and a high standard of living. It is true, I cannot subscribe
to the doctrine that we have solved the problems of pro-
duction and have only to solve those of distribution. I know
of no branch or sub-branch of production which is not
infested with unsolved problems. And if we were to stabi-
lize our development of production at the present point
while trying to improve our situation through a better dis-
tribution, we should be renouncing all hope of a really
adequate standard of living in the future. If we want more
of the good things of life distributed, we have to produce
more of them. I believe that in the long run high paid labor
with moderate hours will produce more than low paid labor
with long hours. And though I do not believe that a mere
shift of purchasing power from one class to another offers
any substantial promise of capacious and steady markets, I
do believe that highly productive, highly paid labor makes
the best market that industry can have.
Nor do I undervalue our social security institutions. It
is socially of immense importance to take the burden of the
old and the sick off the backs of the weakest classes in our
society. It is also of the greatest social importance to accu-
mulate provision in time of prosperity against the distress of
a time of depression. But let us not forget that no country
can carry insurance that would be really adequate against
a depression like the last, when from twelve to fifteen mil-
lion workers were losing fifteen to twenty billion dollars
in wages every year for several years. A hundred billions
in lost wages would be an underestimate of what the de-
pression cost our wage earners. No social security system
ever will be able to collect reserves against such losses as
those.
BUT social engineering will not rest with the details of
employment. It will also work out mechanisms by
which the flow of purchasing power remains fairly even
from year to year, throwing in government credit when
the normal current drops too low, draining off excessive
flow by way of taxation. The problems involved are difficult
but after all incomparably simpler than the problems in-
volved in detailed economic planning such as Russia has
undertaken with some show of success. At best we shall
sometimes miscalculate and have a depression in conse-
quence, just as Russia miscalculated once and had a famine,
and is likely to do so again. But we cannot be excused if
we renounce the attempt to even out the excesses of the
economic cycle.
I have wandered far from the immediate field of the
Welfare Council. You might well say: We are the Red
Cross, not the great General Staff that provides us with the
material for our humanitarian activities. But I wonder
whether civilization would not profit if every general staff,
in planning a heroic campaign, were compelled also to
consult with the Red Cross. Certainly public opinion might
be less bellicose if the budget of lives lost and limbs and
eyes, shattered bodies and minds, were drawn up in cold
JULY 1937
213
tables and presented alongside of the anticipated gains in
national prestige and profit. Welfare councils throughout
the country could give us luminous forecasts as to the cas-
ualties in the form of jobs to be expected from the intro-
duction of the mechanical cotton picker or any other bril-
liant invention.
But first of all, through case studies and surveys, the
social agencies as a group can apprise the public of the
sources of the poverty, illness and delinquency with which
they have to deal. In the end they will force upon our minds
the need for action, the wisdom, if necessary, of spending
money freely in the present to check the growth of evils
that will involve vastly greater sums in the future.
After all, it is not through defect of good will that we
as a nation manage our social problems so badly. It is
through defect of real understanding. And the social work-
ers will be forced in the exercise of their functions to supply
us with the relevant facts in ever increasing volume, until
the thickest bandage of indifference or self interest will be
insufficient to protect our ears from the din.
What About Volunteers
By FLORENCE LUKENS NEWBOLD
Executive secretary, Volunteer Service Bureau, Philadelphia
TWENTY-FIVE of the largest cities in the country
are now approaching the development of effective
volunteer service in social work by means of central
placement bureaus; the National Committee on Volunteers
is now a recognized associate group in the National Con-
ference of Social Work, with its discussions at the annual
meeting closely integrated into the large program; pro-
gressive public welfare officials are discussing seriously the
active participation of volunteers in the expanding public
services; in the State of Washington a Friendly Visiting
Service, staffed entirely by volunteers, is an integral part
of the program of old age assistance and, says the director of
the State Department of Public Welfare, "is well beyond
the experimental stage."
All of these things — and the list might be longer — are
indications of renewed interest in the function and contri-
bution of the volunteer in social work. They are encourag-
ing in their implications but they do not in themselves an-
swer certain questions still being pondered by both lay and
professional workers: What is the function of the volunteer
today? Does it fulfill a basic need of the social agency — of
the community — of the volunteers themselves ? Is the whole
concept of volunteer service outmoded ?
In Philadelphia, where the central placement agency, the
Volunteer Service Bureau, is now in its third year, enough
experience has accumulated to shed light on what may be the
answers. Here, as in most large cities, volunteers have al-
ways had a part — sometimes more, sometimes less — in social
work as it developed under private auspices. However,
there was not much rhyme or reason either to their general
recruitment or placement until several years ago when the
Community Council became interested in the subject and
appointed a committee to study it. Active on this committee,
along with representatives of agencies using volunteers,
were members of the Junior League and of the Clearing
House for Volunteers of the Jewish Federation, both of
which had been receiving more calls than they could
possibly fill.
The upshot of the committee's study was a new enter-
prise, the Volunteer Service Bureau, with a board of direc-
tors drawn largely from laymen with a wide variety of so-
cial agency affiliations. A budget providing for an executive
secretary, office space and necessary expenses was assured for
a period of years by the Junior League, an interested indi-
vidual, and additions from other sources. The avowed pur-
pose of the bureau was to serve:
Volunteers, both men and women, by helping them to find
volunteer work in the field where their talents can be used
to the best advantage.
Lay workers, by arranging training courses to broaden their
vision of community and social conditions and to increase their
interest in volunteer service.
The community, by supplying civic, cultural, educational and
social agencies with dependable volunteers.
Community agencies, by cooperating with other volunteer
placement bureaus and acting as a clearing house for volunteer
workers.
From the beginning the Volunteer Service Bureau has
maintained close relationship with the Junior League and
the Jewish Clearing Bureau, referring calls back and forth
and cooperating in many undertakings, notably in the
educational program and in emergencies requiring large
numbers of volunteer workers.
OUR volunteers are people with every variety of back-
ground and experience, about their only common
denominator being a certain amount of leisure and a desire
to use it in some constructive, "growing" way. We have
debutantes and professors' wives; graduates of highschools
and of foreign universities; young women and old, bored
with the futilities of social life; mothers whose children
have grown up and business women reaching for satisfying
after-hour activities. We have men too — retired men, busy
men, young men who want "to understand life." But not
nearly enough men to fill all the calls for them.
Our recruiting methods are various: leaflets distributed
at large general social work meetings; talks by the execu-
tive secretary to social agency boards, alumnae clubs, wom-
en's clubs, church groups and the like; letters to and
conferences with college deans and university professors.
The largest number of volunteers come from sources not
directly cultivated — from a friend telling a friend, from
callers at .the social service building, from telephone inquir-
ies inspired by our listing under welfare agencies in the
classified directory.
Our most successful recruiting effort was by means of a
list of about two hundred debutantes of the past five years
who were not members of the Junior League. To this list
we sent, in a single autumn month, first, an attractive
folder headed The Best Investment of the Year; second,
an invitation to our annual luncheon, and third, a notice of
the course for volunteers. This effort yielded nineteen active
volunteers and many good future prospects.
Newspaper publicity brought many applicants, but only
one out of four was considered eligible for placement. Most
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THE SURVEY
of them came in the hope of contacts that would lead to
paid employment. All newspaper publicity now defines a
volunteer as one "who gives service and expects no remu-
neration in terms of money." Even so we are constantly
weeding out persons whose sole motive is immediate paid
employment. Let me add, however, that we have placed
many people, especially in clerical work, who greatlyr needed
paid jobs, but always with the agreement that they would
not urge their situation on the agency where they were
placed and with the understanding of the agencies that these
people were giving service only until they found paid em-
ployment.
IN the two and a half years that the bureau has been
operating, 137 agencies asked for service and 106 received
it. All of the agencies were visited personally by the execu-
tive secretary before placement, a policy which we consider
most important. Follow-up visits have been made to some,
with the goal set of visiting all agencies a second time be-
fore our third year is brought to a close. The number of
agencies in which the bureau has volunteers at any one
time varies from thirty-five to fifty-one. The idea of limit-
ing placements to a certain number of agencies is being con-
sidered but no basis for receiving or refusing requests has
as yet been agreed upon. In some communities where the
volunteer bureau is an integral part of the Council of Social
Agencies, placement is limited to member agencies.
During those two and a half years the bureau received
503 new applications from volunteers and made a total of
603 placements. Of these 287 were for long time service
and 316 for short time. During the winter of 1936-37 it
had 165 active volunteers on the list. Of those previously
recruited but no longer active 42 percent had found paid
employment; 14 percent were rejected before placement; 8
percent were dropped after a brief placement ; 20 percent
had been referred to other bureaus ; 4 percent had moved
out of the city and 12 percent had withdrawn without giv-
ing any reason.
Satisfactory placement depends as much upon the agency as
upon the volunteer. Agencies are recognizing increasingly the
importance of the supervision of volunteers, two or three of
them having gone so far as to make this the chief responsi-
bility of one of the staff. From the beginning, the Philadel-
phia Volunteer Service Bureau has assumed the right to
withdraw volunteers from or to refuse placement in agen-
cies not giving proper supervision to their lay workers. The
bureau also has felt that in such a new enterprise agencies,
as well as the central bureau, would benefit by a free dis-
cussion of common problems by agency supervisors. Such
conferences have proved helpful. The first one included
supervisors from all types of agencies, but a better plan
seems to be to bring together supervisors from a common
field of work. Thus hospital supervisors meet at one time,
group work agencies at another, and so on.
A plan now under consideration is for small groups of
volunteers to confer about their common problems. Such
conferences wrould be a follow-up of the general orientation
course which volunteers have found extremely helpful and
might pave the way for advanced or specialized courses
such as are given by central bureaus in other communities.
There is general agreement in Philadelphia that the edu-
cational program of the Volunteer Service Bureau is its
strongest feature. For the past two years, with the joint
sponsorship of the Clearing House for Women Volunteers
of the Jewish Federation, it has arranged an orientation
course for lay workers, enrolling seventy-nine the first year
and fifty-one the second. Outstanding lecturers in the vari-
ous fields of social work addressed the class with time
provided — and used — for discussion. Following each lecture
visits were made to agencies and institutions in the field
just discussed, with an opportunity to evaluate the visits at
the opening of the following session: A charge of $1 was
made for the course of eleven sessions. Enrolled were vol-
unteer applicants preparing for service.
Last year the bureau, in cooperation with the Jewish
Clearing House, arranged an all-day institute for some 150
board members representing fifty-three agencies. Later on it
arranged, in connection with the State Conference of Social
Work, a conference on the function of the board member,
which was attended by about seventy-five persons.
With this review of the work of a central volunteer
bureau, the question again is posed: Is the concept of volun-
teer service outmoded? For agencies? They still seek de-
pendable, satisfactory lay workers. Last year the Philadel-
phia bureau supplied fifty-six agencies through 168 place-
ments totaling over 20,000 hours of service. Yet it is safe
to say that these agencies would have recruited such help
somehow had there been no central bureau to which to
turn; had they had no lay help at all, their work probably
would have suffered little, geared as it was to the tempo
of an efficient, highly trained, professional staff. Volunteer
service may be outmoded for social agencies in terms of
work accomplished. Then why this determined interest on
the part of both lay and professional workers not only to
recruit volunteers but to raise the standard of service
through intelligent placement, supervision and training?
TWO reasons stand out, reasons found in the need of
the community and of the volunteer if not of the
agency.
First, the community needs an informed public, aware of
the ills and difficulties that beset it and concerned with
remedies for such ills. It needs a public which understands
and believes in the work of its social agencies. It needs an
intelligent and trained public to act as interpreter of its
social program to the many who "pass by on the other
side." Board members, that most important group of volun-
teer workers, are not always concerned about the social
program of the community as a whole. Many restrict their
interest and activity to their own pet agency. The most
effective training for board membership is a term of ser-
vice as an active volunteer with definite responsibilities reg-
ularly assumed. If wise supervision is given, the volunteer,
at the end of a year or two, should see her work in relation
to the entire program of the agency ; should see the contri-
bution the agency makes to the neighborhood and glimpse
its work in relation to the social program of the city as a
whole. Citizens intelligently informed on community needs
are found in every city and town but their number should
be multiplied over and over again. Volunteer service, in-
telligently rendered, is one way to do it.
Second, the individual needs the experience that lay work
offers. That volunteers are loath to recognize or accept this
fact is evidenced in the feeling of guilt that is often ex-
pressed in a remark such as, "You know I am utterly selfish
in my offer to be of service." Why should they feel guilty
about it? The motivation for lay service is an interesting
question, too lengthy for discussion here. The root of it
seems to be the need which each individual has to express
himself in some interest or activity outside of himself and
JULY 1937
215
his immediate environment. An interesting, satisfying voca-
tion is denied many people but an avocation, broadening in
experience and in human contacts, often proves an avenue
of release. Lay service can utilize almost any hobby that
an individual pursues, the sharing of which often brings
satisfying, if intangible, results. For the individual with no
particular hobby, lay service itself may become an avoca-
tion of the highest type, opening avenues of thought and
experience that result in an out-going, out-reaching person-
ality. It is necessary, however, that an individual using lay
service as a means to a fuller, broader life should not sub-
stitute activity for the mental process. A thoughtful, intelli-
gent approach to lay work must accompany the activity
if a real interpretation of social conditions is to result.
No, volunteer service is not outmoded today. Community
life needs the contribution which laymen, volunteers and
board members make in discovering social needs, in strength-
ening the work of social agencies and in interpreting the
program of social work to the community which supports it.
It needs the partnership, the shared responsibility of the
lay and professional group which makes for more creative,
more effective thinking than by either group alone.
Employment Service— New Style
By ELEANOR ALLEN
THE employment and counseling center in Pasadena,
Calif., grew out of community need; was made pos-
sible by community vision. As in so many other cities,
the depression struck before Pasadena was prepared to han-
dle the long lines of job hunters. There was no time to
plan, to coordinate. First one project, then another, was
hurriedly instituted in an effort to stem unemployment.
Services were often duplicated or lines of demarcation so
finely drawn that those who needed help were uncertain
where they should apply. Cities of every size, east and west,
will recall their own desperate and disjointed efforts to
meet a similar situation.
By 1932 so many community agencies in Pasadena had
opened job-finding bureaus in such widely separated parts
of the city that a man seeking work could scarcely walk to
them all in one day. Pasadena community leaders deplored
this inevitable confusion. They recognized the need for an
employment program, adequate to basic community needs,
but flexible enough to meet changing conditions. Fortunate-
ly, there was an organization which had been gradually
working toward a centralized and comprehensive employ-
ment and counseling service for the community. The organi-
zation was the Vocation Bureau, founded in 1919 by Wini-
fred Hausam to give free counseling and placement service
to women. Miss Hausam and those associated with her saw
that a centralized placement bureau was not merely a tem-
porary need, that it would be an increasing necessity because
of rapid technical and economic changes. For the same rea-
son, they saw that vocational counseling would be more,
rather than less, important in the future. The movement
for this new style employment and counseling center won
the support of citizens and local organizations.
California accepted the provisions of the Wagner-Peyser
Act, providing for an affiliated federal-state employment
service. On July 1, 1935, the Pasadena Employment Bureau
became part of this service, and reorganization was begun.
Offices were chosen on the second floor of a building owned
by a city department. By January 1936, all community
placement effort was centered in the Pasadena Employment
Bureau, and the Vocation Bureau had moved into the new
headquarters. These are a far cry from old-time employ-
ment offices. Light, clean, strictly businesslike in appear-
ance, they simultaneously put an applicant at ease, welcome
and encourage him. There is no loitering, but for those
waiting for interviews there are chairs and magazines.
Miss Hausam was asked by the city to reorganize and
coordinate the bureaus, and already the two divisions func-
tion as one unit. "This is due," according to Miss Hau-
sam, "to the excellent cooperation between the counselor?
of the Vocation Bureau and the placement interviewers
of the Employment Bureau." When placement interview-
ers, in the course of their daily work, find applicants who
are "problem cases" or who are in need of vocational ad-
justment, they refer these persons directly to the coun-
selors. On the other hand, placement interviewers cooperate
in helping to place those clients of the Vocation Bureau
who are ready for employment.
ONLY seven other cities in this country have or have
had such unified placement and counseling service.
In the Tri-City experiment in Minnesota; in Rochester,
N. Y. ; in New York City, Philadelphia and Cincinnati,
research bureaus or foundations with ample funds have
set up model centers. [See Survey Graphic February 1933,
page 87.] But Pasadena is the only city to establish such
placement and counseling service solely through its own
civic effort.
One close observer predicts that the Pasadena bureau
will contribute valuably to the experiments so ably carried
on in these other centers. It is expected that Pasadena's
employment and counseling bureau will also demonstrate
two convictions of professionally trained employment work-
ers: first, that for the most efficient service to the unem-
ployed a community should have but one job-finding agency
— free, of course, and meeting professional placement stand-
ards; second, that no public employment service can fully
meet the needs of a community unless supplemented by a
vocational adjustment service.
To both the placement interviewers of the Employment
Bureau and the counselors of the Vocation Bureau the
psychological testing service is available when necessary.
Certain trade tests, aptitude tests, tests of mental ability,
personality, and interest are scored and analyzed by the
consulting psychologist. Experience shows that most appli-
cants readily cooperate when the purposes of the tests and
the results to be expected are explained.
The Pasadena project is in a very real sense a commu-
nity effort. Cities that contemplate modernizing their
community employment activities will find it enlightening
to review how various units and agencies cooperate in this
joint service. Here, briefly, is the picture:
The City of Pasadena arranged for the affiliation of the
216
THE SURVEY
3ity Free Employment Bureau with the California State
Employment Service so that an adequate service with pro-
essional placement standards might be available. The city
irovides ample space at low rental, and contributes janitor
ervice, electricity, water and telephone. It sponsored a
•Vorks Progress Administration project for remodeling the
ffices.
The Pasadena Community Chest provides financial sup-
iort for the Pasadena Vocation Bureau.
The California State Employment Service accepted the
'asadena Employment Bureau as an affiliated office under
he terms of the Wagner-Peyser Act and provided funds
or the purchase of modern steel office equipment.
The Council of Social Agencies and member agencies
nalce all their resources available to the counselors. The
ocial workers of the various agencies — health services,
narital and domestic relations departments, recreation
.gencies, legal aid, welfare organizations, clothing bureaus,
lay nurseries and boarding institutions for children — co-
iperate in meeting non-vocational problems in order that
he individual may be placed more satisfactorily.
The California State Bureau of Vocational Rehabilita-
ion supplies special service for the handicapped.
The Pasadena Public School System gives information
>n request concerning the educational background of
'oung people who have attended Pasadena schools. It also
ises information from the bureau in establishing vocational
:ourses to meet the changing occupational needs of the
:ommunity.
The California Youth Administration carried on a proj-
ict, sponsored by the Pasadena Employment Bureau and
iupervised by Western Personnel Service, to make a survey
>f community resources to be used by the counseling ser-
vice. In the operation of this youth project, the support of
lumerous community groups was enlisted. Representatives
)f the vocational guidance and vocational education depart-
ments of the public schools, the Board of Education, the
Council of Social Agencies, the Junior and Senior Cham-
bers of Commerce, and the Emergency Education Program,
as well as the Vocation Bureau, acted in an advisory ca-
pacity for the project.
Through its counseling division, the California Youth
Administration provides the services of a competent psy-
chologist for the vocational adjustment service and fur-
nishes some materials for the testing program.
The Pasadena Chamber of Commerce helps to build
employer support for the bureau and through its various
departments and committees supplies useful information.
The Pasadena Merchants Association also helps interpret
the bureau to the employers in the community.
The Pasadena employment and counseling center is a
community project in another sense. Already the people
have taken it wholeheartedly into their lives. Employers
in increasing numbers show appreciation of efficient place-
ment service by using the bureaus. The laboring man, the
professional man, the salesman, the domestic worker, the
business girl, the professional woman turn to it with con-
fidence, pride and gratitude.
A high salaried professional woman, broken in health
and short of funds, who sought the services of the bureau
to find employment in a vocation that would permit her to
rebuild her strength, expressed feelingly what thousands
of others have said in different ways:
It's like a miracle to me — to find an intelligently conducted
employment bureau that does not charge for getting positions.
To enjoy, in addition, the free assistance of trained counselors
and a consulting psychologist who are helping me to find myself
again — that, indeed, is a modern wonder.
And a cement finisher expressed the staunch support of
Pasadena when he called out, as he left the bureau: "I'm
going to send in some fellows I know. This place is O.K. !"
Boarding Out Delinquent Children
By C. D. McNAMEE
TONY, by a change of pace, evaded the last tackier
and crossed the goal line for a touchdown. All his
highschool mates and other fans in the grandstand
:ame to their feet cheering. Over by the gate a policeman
svagged his head in wonderment. For he was one of the
few of the cheering crowd who knew that this hero of the
ifternoon had been, only a few years ago, the town terror
beaded, if the policeman knew anything about it, "to hell
'n' back" — certainly to the reformatory, probably to the
state prison.
That Tony did not fulfill the anticipation of the police-
man and of most of the other respectable members of the
community who fell athwart his early career is one of the
reasons why a little group of citizens of Muskegon, Mich.,
believe that they are on the right track in the difficult busi-
ness of reforming juvenile delinquents. It all started really
with the late Senator James Couzens and his concern with
children, a concern which he implemented by establishing
the Children's Fund of Michigan and endowing it with $10
million. Senator Couzens had ideas of his own on the treat-
ment of wayward and delinquent children. He had no pa-
tience with a blanket policy of committing them to state
institutions, and cited the records to show that these in-
stitutions, even the best of them, were less schools for re-
form than schools for crime.
His convictions on this point were shared by Ruth
Thompson, for twelve years judge of the probate court of
Muskegon County. She too had no faith in reform by
institution and in a small way, with few facilities, had been
experimenting in another kind of treatment — putting boys
and girls to board in private families under court authority
and volunteer supervision.
Thus it came about that when, six years ago, the trustees
of the Children's Fund determined to make an experiment
in non-institutional treatment of delinquent children in
small communities, Muskegon County was chosen as its
scene and Judge Thompson as chairman of its directing
committee — the Couzens' Committee, it calls itself. The
experiment was financed by the Children's Fund with an
annual appropriation of $5000. The Fund made it clear
that its major interest was not only in the principle of
boarding out delinquent children but also in the application
of that principle in a community where professional social
workers are few and far between and where success or
JULY 1937
217
failure of the project would revolve around volunteers as
supervisors. Small communities frequently are discouraged
from undertaking enterprises of this kind because of their
lack of paid workers and the emphasis put on the necessity
for such workers by large city organizations which can af-
ford them. The Muskegon County experiment has rested
entirely on volunteer supervision.
From the beginning the children selected for this special
treatment have not been hand-picked for their "hopeful-
ness." On the contrary they have been children for whom
the alternative would have been commitment to a state in-
stitution. Among them were town terrors — the bane of po-
lice but the heroes of their mates, gang leaders in their own
right. One boy had shot and killed his father during an
argument, another had acted as lookout for a notorious gang
of thieves, another had had against him twenty-eight
charges of breaking and entering.
THE committee has confined its effort to boys and girls
between the ages of ten and fifteen who, by scientific
tests, are shown to be mentally bright and alert. Careful
psychiatric and physical examinations are the first step in
each case with minor physical defects corrected as routine
procedure. The home to which a child is sent is subjected
to careful study with candid discussion on both sides and a
realization that the attitude of the boarding parents more
than the physical home setting is a major determinant in
success or failure of the relationship with the boarding
child. No difficulty has been encountered in finding suitable
boarding parents who are paid from $4 to $6.50 a week
depending on the particular child and on certain other con-
ditions. All the committee's experience points to the con-
clusion that too much care cannot be given to choosing a
particular home for a particular child. Just any good home
will not do. Child and home must be considered together.
This does not mean of course that a child or a home is
written off as a failure because either one does not make
good in the first instance. Changing a child from one home
to another is not infrequent, though a good first placement
is much to be desired. Tony, the football player, was in four
different homes within two years before a place was found
where he began to make progress.
These of course are the approved procedures of good
child placing — the difference is that with these particular
children procedures must be a little better than good.
Nothing can be left to chance ; every move must be weighed
in advance, every step made in consonance with a whole
set of conditions subject to change without notice. No sin-
gle factor can be disregarded. Take for example the matter
of clothes. Clothes, they say, do not make the man but the
Muskegon County committee is of the firm opinion that
they have a lot to do with the feelings of boys and girls
whose self-respect has been through a pretty shattering
process. Before a child goes to his new home he is taken on
a shopping expedition and is outfitted, brand new, from
top to toe, with a "best" dress or a "Sunday suit" to boot.
Often these are the first new appropriate garments the
children have ever had. "Dress these boys and girls just a
little better than average" is a rule which the committee
early adopted, and which it has never regretted.
Every child has some member of the committee as his
special sponsor who maintains regular contact with the
boarding home, the school and the child. The sponsor does
not in any sense police or over-protect the child. He tries
to establish the relationship of "special friend" with whom
the child is free to discuss his problems and with whom he
may reason out a solution. Needless to say it takes a very
special kind of person to win the confidence of these chil-
dren who have no particular reason for confidence of any
sort and it takes the patience of Job to go along with a
child to a point where he faces up to his own difficulties. I
sometimes think that of all the problems the members of
this committee have faced- — and they have been frequent
and tough — not the least has been the maintenance of their
own infinite patience. They may become discouraged but
they never quit hoping and trying.
The Couzens Committee is not an official body. A child
entrusted to it remains a ward of the probate court which
also is the juvenile court. Any official action in regard to a
child while it is under seventeen years of age must be taken
by the court, but such action always is based on the recom-
mendation of the committee of which the judge is a member.
The committee takes a child for no set period, but in
most cases has retained control for five or six years, usually
until the child has finished highschool or is able to care for
himself. In a few cases where special circumstances havf
arisen such as changed conditions in the home, control has
been exercised for only six months or a year. But in any
event the committee continues to follow the child's progress
and often to aid him in minor ways.
While close cooperation exists between the county author-
ities and the committee the county has aided financially in
only a few cases. Relatives have aided in other cases, paying
a part of the board or contributing toward clothing. Some
of the boarding home parents have reduced the board in
return for work done by the children, while a few children
have obtained jobs and contributed toward their own
clothing.
The mental clinic to which the children are sent for
examination is maintained by one of the state hospitals and
no charge is made for its services. Dental work, glasses and
the like are provided by the committee, but local dentists
and others cooperate by reducing their fees. The county
physician and members of the medical society provide med-
ical services for the boys and girls. Some merchants cooper-
ate by reducing the prices of clothing.
The project has saved Muskegon County thousands of
dollars, although the work of the committee is not repre-
sented in dollars and cents, but in reclaiming delinquents.
For example: in 1928, the juvenile delinquency problem
had reached such a serious stage in Muskegon, an industrial
city, that the voters approved a special tax to erect a juvenile
detention home to cost about $40,000, to say nothing of
maintenance.
SOON afterward, the Couzens' project was launched
and the leaders of the juvenile gangs were removed
from the community and placed in boarding homes. Almost
overnight the gangs disappeared, and so did the acute need
for a juvenile detention home. It never has been erected.
In the six years that the experiment has been under way
fifty-four children, mostly boys, have been placed in board-
ing homes. Twenty boys and one girl are in such homes
today; thirty-one are making their own way in the world,
apparently well-adjusted and in no more danger of "going
wrong" than any other normal young persons. Several of
the children were graduated from highschool, two as presi-
dents of the senior class. One is working his way through
college. Of the whole fifty-four only two have been defi-
nitely failures. One was a girl of sixteen, an exception to
218
THE SURVEY
•the age limitation, whose own mother had been a party to
her delinquency, and who eventually returned to the life
her mother led. The other was a boy, but recent develop-
ments have raised a hope that he may come through after
all. In any case the committee puts up against any state
reform school its score of fifty-two successes and two fail-
ures. For these children, it must not be forgotten, were not
just "naughty." They had been through the whole mill of
pre-delinquency and were on the record as definitely delin-
quent. The next stage in their progress "to hell 'n' back"
was the reform school. They were taken, almost literally,
from its doorstep.
Miss Thompson is no longer judge of the probate court
but is still, happily, a member of the Couzens Committee.
Senator Couzens is dead. In his last public address he said
of the Muskegon County experiment, "We feel that we
have demonstrated to the State of Michigan and to other
states the proper method of treating delinquent children."
The committee realizes that numerically its operations
have been small. It believes however that its experiment
has great significance as the demonstration of a rational
method, child by child, home by home, by which a child at
odds with society almost surely can be rehabilitated. It be-
lieves that this method holds more hope for the child and
more assurance for society than treatment by the "reform"
methods of the usual institutions. It believes that it has,
indeed, "pointed the way," especially for small communi-
ties which must lean heavily on volunteer service.
Tough Facts About Hospitals
The tangled web of New York's vast organization for the care of the sick
By MICHAEL M. DAVIS
SIXTY years ago, Dr. W. Gill Wylie, a prominent
physician of New York City, wrote that we should
"limit hospital accommodations to those who have no
homes and to those who cannot be assisted at their homes.
. . . the majority of our hospitals, as they are at present man-
aged are liable to do more harm than good. . . . Apparently
they do much good, and for the time do relieve suffering
and want, but in the end they may do much harm. Giving
help too readily, even during sickness, is hurtful."
When Dr. Wylie 's book was published in 1877, nobody
went to hospitals except the destitute. Professional nursing
was just beginning. Clinics were in their infancy. Visiting
nursing was practically unknown. The beginnings of a city
health department had been made only about a decade
earlier.
The Hospital Survey of New York, just completed by
Dr. Haven Emerson, Dr. Gertrude Sturges, and their staff
of assistants, consultants, "collaborating individual authors"
and agencies, tells us that in 1934 over half a million resi-
dents of the metropolis, rich as well as poor, received care
in general hospitals. More than double that number of per-
sons made over eight and a half million visits to the 234
out-patient departments and dispensaries. In the 200 hospi-
tals with nearly fifty thousand beds, about a quarter of a
billion dollars is invested in plants and equipment. In 1934
about $70 million was spent on maintenance and about $15
million more if we add the out-patient departments and
other organized services for the sick.
With much of this fat volume [Report of the Hospital
Survey of New York, Vol. II. Published by The United
Hospital Fund. 1246 pp. Price $2.50, plus 25 cents post-
age from The Survey} social workers will be less concerned
than hospital administrators, physicians, public officials and
philanthropic givers. There are, naturally, many tough
pages of fact for those who must wrestle with the immediate
problems of administration. A companion volume, soon to
appear as Vol. Ill of the published report, will present
finances. A summary — Vol. I of the report — which it is
promised will be brief, may be fruitful for general reading
if the average length of its sentences is reduced as com-
pared with those in the present book.
Welfare officials and other public administrators, execu-
tives of chests and other community agencies, and social
workers in general will gain certain broad values from this
study. The immense and increasing volume of organized
medical services is profoundly impressive. Their financing
is an intriguing 'study in itself, requiring the difficult com-
bination of the element of self-support through payment
from patients, the element of public support from taxes and
the element of charity. Their outside relationships annually
appear more intricate and exigent. Organized medical care
in hospitals, clinics, and homes is deeply involved with the
private practice of medicine, with the preventive work of
health departments, with the economic efficiency of the
population, and with the organized social services for relief,
education, rehabilitation and recreation.
HOW adequately do New York's medical institutions
fulfill their original function of caring for the poor?
In 1934 some 332,452 persons who were unable to pay any-
thing for their care were admitted to voluntary and gov-
ernmental hospitals in New York City. This was nearly
60 percent of all hospital patients. Queries the Hospital
Survey:
Has New York City enough hospital facilities to care for
these people? Is this only a temporary situation? What efforts
can be made to reduce this load on the hospitals? What is the
best way for the community to provide hospital care for such
a group?
The first of these questions can be answered in the negative.
The number of hospital beds for the general care of persons
who cannot pay is insufficient to meet the present demand,
although this demand is probably considerably greater than it
would be if organized medical care in the home were more
fully developed, so that many patients now admitted to hospi-
tals either could be treated at home or have their period of
stay in hospital materially shortened. Most governmental hospi-
tals are shockingly overcrowded and the wards in voluntary
hospitals accepting public charges are used to capacity. Hospital
facilities for free care have not been increased as fast as
necessity has forced members of the community into the class
of those unable to pay for their hospital care. Studies of the
relation of health and the depression have shown that the ill-
ness rate among the new poor has been relatively higher than
in any other economic group. . . .
JULY 1937
219
Can the burden of free care be reduced? The Hospital
Survey proposes expansion and improvements in medical
and nursing service in the homes, which would take some
cases out of hospitals. Group hospitalization, a form of vol-
untary sickness insurance, now has some 400,000 persons
in the metropolitan area who pre-pay for their hospital care
at the rate of about $10 a year. This plan has grown from
nothing within two years, but it is not yet nearly large
enough in membership to make a substantial impression
within the metropolitan area of ten million people. Exten-
sion of preventive measures may reduce some types of dis-
ease in hospitals, but the advance of medical knowledge and
techniques tends, on the other hand, to extend the demands
for institutional care and to increase costs.
Increased governmental responsibility for providing or
financing hospital care for those who cannot pay for it is
part of the answer. The city government carries nearly 40
percent of all general hospital beds and a much larger
part of the load of free care. It expends some $4 million an-
nually in paying approved voluntary hospitals for the care
of public charges. Another part of the responsibility, says
the Hospital Survey, falls on the voluntary hospitals them-
selves. The 150 voluntary hospitals have a fine record of
professional service within their own four walls, but as a
rule they are not cooperators: they have been prima donnas.
Despite the presence of a large number of vacant beds for
private and semi-private patients and of demands for free
care which they could not meet financially, a considerable
number of hospitals, says the Hospital Survey, have in-
creased their capacity chiefly in their private or semi-private
accommodations. In 1930 a third of the private and semi-
private beds were empty on the average day of the year and
in 1934 half were empty. The ambitions of institutional
authorities and medical staff members, it is intimated with
gentle firmness, have impelled expansions with little regard
to community needs or to the fullest utilization of large
capital investments which must be begged from individuals
and agencies.
The depression placed heavy burdens on the out-patient
services, increasing greatly the number of patients who
sought care in clinics rather than in private doctors' offices.
At the same time the funds were reduced with which the
clinics could provide personnel, equipment and materials.
Long waiting periods in clinics are a continuing evil, less
excusable now that some clinics have demonstrated how this
waste and suffering can be reduced through effective admis-
sion methods, the provision of adequate personnel and ap-
pointment systems.
THE increased pressure from medical societies to reduce
out-patient work has been met in New York by still
more weighty public pressures for more service. Out of dis-
cussions and controversies on this subject has emerged the
program of paying doctors for out-patient work, which the
Hospital Survey recommends should be done as rapidly as
money can be found. Such payment, along with the similarly
recommended payment for some hospital work by physicians
and for medical care in the homes, would be a major step
in more rational relationships between physicians and or-
ganized medical services, and more effective administration.
Hospitals and clinics are social institutions in their relation-
ships, but they are medical agencies in their primary func-
tions. The Hospital Survey does well to emphasize by fact
and preachment the major responsibilities which physicians
as individuals and as organized medical staffs must assume,
not only in the treatment of individual patients but also in
the determination of policy and program.
How extensively do the hospitals and clinics of New York
not only care for the sick but provide workshops and educa-
tional opportunities for the physicians of the locality? The
physician who is cut off from staff privileges in a hospital
or clinic is seriously handicapped. The studies on this point
have returned rather unsatisfactory figures, since a consid-
erable proportion of physicians did not furnish the informa-
tion requested. A large proportion of those who failed to
reply are probably the ones without an institutional con-
nection. The evidence is that a distinct proportion of the
physicians of the city and their patients must go without the
benefits that come from a physician's membership on a hos-
pital or clinic staff.
READERS of this survey will find sections on matters
with which social workers are continuously concerned
in behalf of their clients — ambulance service, nursing
care of the sick in their homes, care for chronic disease,
convalescent care, services for the mentally sick, the tuber-
culous patient, the maternity case, the patient who has
venereal disease, diabetes or a mouthful of carious teeth.
From out of its mass of details the Hospital Survey builds
up broad conclusions. Hospital services for the general care
of the sick poor should be increased. The overcrowded gov-
ernmental hospitals should be expanded in some degree and
relieved further by the fuller use of voluntary hospitals
paid by tax funds. Organized medical care of the sick in
their homes should be developed as an extension of hospital
service rather than as an independent enterprise. Out-pa-
tient care for public charges in non-governmental institu-
tions should, like hospital care, be paid for out of public
funds on an agreed basis. Extension and improvement of
services for the chronic sick is a major need. The distinctive
work of the New York City Department of Hospitals in
this and other respects is warmly commended. Specific
recommendations are made concerning the increase and
quality of the improvement of nursing service and of med-
ical social service in hospitals.
But how transform the present jumble of institutional
and agency relationships into something approaching a co-
herent system? The Hospital Survey is far from proposing
a planned economy under governmental auspices, for in the
hospital field non-governmental institutions occupy a major
place. It does propose, however, the establishment of "a
permanent representative or authoritative planning group,"
which would include governmental as well as non-govern-
mental representatives of both institutions and the general
public. "The number of beds for private patients in volun-
tary hospitals should not be increased without the approval
of the authoritative planning group." In other words,
future capital investment in hospitals needs systematic com-
munity control.
A review can illustrate only a few significant points.
The Hospital Survey of New York exemplifies the com-
plexity and the excellencies of modern medical care and its
affiliated social services. It illustrates likewise the dangers
of institutionalism and the confusions of individualism
which are characteristic of America. The scale is of a differ-
ent order of magnitude in New York City than in Middle-
town, but those who have occasion to study or deal with
these problems anywhere will find that whether they look
through the small end or the big end of the opera glass,
they will see the same picture.
220
THE SURVEY
"For the Good of the Cause"
By HELEN M. MANAHAN
Case worker, Hamilton County Welfare Department, Cincinnati, Ohio
WITH no desire for crass gain or for the honors
that sometimes accrue to social inventors I here-
with offer to my fellow workers in public relief
agencies the solution to one of their most persistent prob-
lems, namely, dictation.
There is no occasion for a sales talk on the virtues of my
invention — it speaks for itself. It is apparent at once that
this system will result in great economy of dictaphone cyl-
inder wax now used in enormous quantities in recording the
uhs, urns, ers, andas and operator-omit-last-sentences of case
workers whose mental faculties geared to heavy case loads
and paper work, refuse to perk at the allotted dictation
period. The system has obvious advantages also for the com-
pilation of valuable social data. A simple tabulation made
from these forms, properly checked, will yield important
statistics on number of naked children at large, on land-
lords who won't paper, on nagging wives and brutal hus-
bands.
Many workers adopting this system will vary the check
list slightly in accordance with local terminology. I myself,
while serving as intake interviewer, found that a list of
nine answers covered all variations of the replies to the ques-
tion of how the applicant was now supporting himself. They
were: "Just piddlin' 'round," "Scratchin'," "Scrapin',"
"Scufflin'," "Junkin1," "Odd jobbin'," "Doin' ends V
odds," "Jist the best I knows how," and, finally, "I ain't."
The form which I have developed is not copyrighted. It
is offered without price purely for the good of the cause.
DICTATION SIMPLIFIED
NAME OF FAMILY.
VISITED (date) . . .
MAN
WOMAN
was
asked for
MAN
WOMAN
MAN
WOMAN
said
he'd
she'd
said landlord
WOMAN said HUSBAND
shoes
coal
clothing
surplus commodity
card
job
write to the governor
see the higher-ups
get coal or else
get the worker's job
go to the court house
write to Washington
refused to take vouchers
asked for rent
gave an eviction notice
said he'd call worker
said he had to pay his taxes
refused to paper
mistreated her
drank
went with other women
deserted
beat the kids
was looking for work
just went down the street
in
out
drunk
sober
antagonistic
pleasant
MAN
WOMAN
MAN
WOMAN
said children
doing well in school
looking for work
barefooted
playing truant
out gathering wood
naked
was burnt out
needed a new grate
said stove burned lots of coal
needed a new lining
would cost eight dollars
MAN
WOMAN
said
he was
she was
taking shots
going to clinic
sick
going to hospital
doing poorly
going to doctor
MAN said WIFE
had just gone to the store
went with other men
nagged
couldn't manage
bossed the kids
was common-law wife
WORKER asked
MAN
WOMAN
1. To register for work.
2. To see district physician.
3. To go to clinic.
4. To come to office following day.
5. To get an extension on gas and electric bill.
6. To try to find some odd jobs.
7. To talk to the landlord.
8. To bring in landlord's name and address.
9. To bring in proof of residence.
10. To promise to care for dependents if placed on WPA.
DIRECTIONS: Insert name and date in space provided. Check whether man or the woman was interviewed — if both, check
both. A simple check mark placed to the right of the most appropriate answer will complete each section. It is possible that on
any given day it will be necessary to check two or more of the answers. Encircle the number corresponding to request by worker.
JULY 1937
221
MISS BAILEY SAYS:
Mist' Harry Meets a Merit System
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
« "M y^AYBE the legislature will send our merit system
up the spout along with some of our other
good trys — we haven't the shadow of a law to
hold it — but whatever happens it has certainly cramped
Mist' Harry's style and that's worth something."
Miss Bailey had traveled far for a close-up of this hope-
ful young merit system now doomed, it appeared, to an
early demise. She was glad that she was to see it through
the eyes of this cheerful blonde girl who 'had dropped a prom-
ising social work job elsewhere to accept uncertain tenure
in her native state just taking its first steps toward a public
welfare program. But full of questions as she was, Miss
Bailey had to ask first about this Mist' Harry.
"Mist" Harry? I wish we had time to drive out there.
He'd be sitting in front of his store with a palm leaf fan
and the dirtiest shirt in captivity. But such a way with the
ladies! Mist' Harry is a fixer. If anyone in his county gets
stuck in a horse trade, or wants to get the schoolhouse steps
patched up, or is afraid the baby will come before the doctor
gets there, he rushes to Mist' Harry to fix it. He really isn't
such a bad old guy but he certainly did mix things when
he started in to fix relief. He fixed a good job for old Doc
Snively, not a real but a "practical" doctor, who, Mist'
Harry says, is poor at seventy because he's given away so
much charity medicine; and another good one for poor old
Miss Sue who'd share her last cent with a beggar.
"We had quite a time unfixing Mist' Harry's fixing and
every time we turned our backs he unfixed our unfixing.
The local board wobbled back and forth between the two
of us, but it was pretty evident that at heart they felt that
Mist' Harry knew best. It went on like that during FERA
days and even after the new state welfare department came
along. When the merit system was proposed to take over
the whole business of personnel Mist' Harry wouldn't be
bothered with it. He was going good at the time and wasn't
worried. When it really began to roll and he saw what it
meant he was fit to be tied, but the local board, although
it teetered for awhile, found the new system such a relief
from the old bickering that it stood by the system and Mist'
Harry had to' go back to fixing horse trades. If the system
goes out he'll probably bob up again, but I think the board
will not easily let itself in for a renewal of the old grief."
"Are Mist' Harry and his county typical of what you
were up against in trying to get personnel standards?"
"No — o — o, not exactly typical, but every county had local
leadership of one kind or another that had to be taken into
account. Sometimes we could join it, and sometimes we had
to fight it, but we couldn't ignore it. Our effort was to
come at a very inert public opinion and inform and crystal-
lize it as we went along. A merit system was only part of
our purpose ; the other part was education in the merit of a
merit system and all that it implies in good public welfare
administration."
"Now let me get this straight," Miss Bailey interrupted,
"I know that up to the depression this state had no public
welfare program to speak of. The FERA put in its own
relief organization with hardly a by-your-Ieave to commu-
nity customs. Also it stood by during the organization of a
state welfare department which the people in general hardly
knew was needed but accepted because they didn't have to
pay the bill. So then what?"
"You've left out two important points," answered the
blonde girl. "First, although our people as a whole were
pretty backward socially we had a nucleus of intelligent
progressive citizens ready to put their backs into this busi-
ness. Second, every step in the set up of our state depart-
ment was taken with one eye to developing and bringing
along local community opinion. In a way the organization
was imposed on the localities, but its functioning was a
deliberate process of education starting with the state board
itself and spreading out to the local boards and then into
the communities."
"A good idea if it worked."
"Yes, and it did work — spottily, but not too badly. I
suppose the trouble was that we had to go too fast. In a way
the security services crowded us. Because we saw them
coming and wanted to be ready to get them off on the right
foot we moved faster, it now seems, than the public was
prepared to follow. If our merit system goes up the spout
that's probably the reason. It was too far out in front."
"You had courage to try for a merit system while you
were still practically in rompers. A lot of states in long
pants haven't even tried."
"You see we had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
In a way we had a clean slate in the matter of personnel
because we'd had so little public welfare work. Since a big
expansion was certain under the security act it looked like
a chance to start right."
"You'd had the FERA experience. Had that mussed up
your clean slate?"
O, not at all. In the beginning the FERA staff was
nondescript. But little by little we sifted out, taught
and trained until by the time the state board took over we
had a pretty good standard, barring a few Doc Snivelys
and Miss Sues. With security zooming down the road our
next step was to root our gains in clear cut policy. And so
we rushed in where angels fear to tread, and treated our-
selves to a merit system. And in spite of the punishment
maybe we weren't so dumb. You have to start somewhere."
"You mean you just waved a wand and said 'Come forth,
merit system' ?"
"Not on your life. Don't forget that this wasn't just a
merit system, it was education in the merit of the merit
system, and education started right smack in the state board
itself and in the committee which it appointed to study the
whole business. We had a solid year of talk and good hard
thinking — board, committee and staff — before any real
steps were taken."
"Why not have put your drive into getting a law through
the legislature?"
"First place, the legislature wasn't meeting for a year;
second place we needed to experiment with methods before
we froze into legal form; third place, there wasn't a China-
man's chance of getting a law however much we drove
at it."
"Any one of which," commented Miss Bailey, "is a com-
plete answer. But now, given the talk and the thinking, how
222
THE SURVEY
did you go about getting a plan that you believed would
work?"
"First off we called in as active members of the commit-
tee two of the faculty from our leading college. The people
of this state have confidence in educators though not always,
I'm afraid, in education itself. That goes right down the
line to the remote rural neighborhoods where the school
teacher is some one to be listened to, even though the chil-
dren don't always get much schooling. That is why we held
the written examinations in schoolhouses and had teachers
serve as proctors. We gave it a setting that was familiar and
respected.
tiTT^ROM other states that had tackled the merit system
-F the committee got material and then sat down to
study it and to thresh out a plan that it believed would fit
our state, would have a reasonable chance of acceptance
and be a start in the right direction."
"That probably sounds easier than it was," said Miss
Bailey, who knew something of the gap between plan and
practice.
"Right you are. The whole thing had to be pinned down
to reality. Take a residence requirement for example. Ideal-
ly it shouldn't be a qualification at all but you know and I
know that you can't get away with that, not in this state
anyway, so we wrote in two years as a minimum. And the
matter of college education. Sure, we wanted that as a re-
quirement, but we knew we couldn't take a stand on it.
So when it came to educational qualifications for junior
visitors, the lowest classification, we specified a college de-
gree as preferable but put in plenty of ands and ors, shaking
down finally to a minimum of highschool graduation plus
four years in social service or related fields. Maybe we pros-
tituted professional standards, but we had to compromise if
we were to get a foot in the door."
" 'Related fields'— what did that mean?"
"Oh, practically anything. It was a way of making the
first gate seem wide while still keeping a string on it — if you
follow me. Another thing we had to remember was our
going staff, many of whom, we knew, hadn't the educational
qualifications which were the least we were willing to set as
a minimum. We couldn't freeze them into their jobs by
blanketing them into the new system, but they were entitled
to, and public opinion would certainly demand, some pref-
erential treatment. We had to lay the groundwork for
something better than we had, but we also had to start
from where we were.
"We cut that knot by making all the going staff eligible
for the written examination regardless of age, education or
experience. But everybody from top to bottom had to take
that exam. If he failed he lost his job, though he could try
again at the next exam."
"It must have been some job getting up a written exam
equal to all the realities involved."
"It was. I could write a book about it. But remember
that the rating of qualifications turned back a lot of aspirants
at the first gate and that we could begin to tighten up a little.
However we were careful to make the exam practical and
not theoretical and to hold it closely to local conditions."
"Now what about local conditions?" queried Miss
Bailey. "I can see how all this was educational for the state
board and the committee, but how did it get through to the
local boards? Where did you start with them?"
"Exactly where they were — which was in a jam. Per-
sonnel had been a perpetual headache what with pressure
from the state board for acceptable standards and pressure
f-'om people like Mist' Harry for jobs for Doc Snively and
poor old Miss Sue. The boards weren't dumb and they saw
the proposed merit system as their way out. They wouldn't
have to turn down Miss Sue any more, she could go and
take the exam like everybody else."
"I wouldn't call that exactly education in the merit of
the merit system," commented Miss Bailey doubtfully.
"I didn't say it was. I said it was where we started. It
was in the functioning of the plan that we spread out and
got just as many local fingers in the pie as we could."
"A good trick if you can do it."
"Don't be crabby. We did do it. In each of our dozen
administrative districts we had committees of board mem-
bers to manage the whole business locally, to arrange for
the written exam — that's where the school people came in —
and actually to conduct the personal interviews which were
the last gate in the elimination process."
"You mean that these local committees, with their brief
sketchy experience, interviewed the applicants and that their
grading counted in the final rating?"
"I certainly do, and it worked fine. The applicants were
much more at ease than they would have been with a strange
committee traveling from place to place, and what it did
for the education of the board members would surprise you.
Of course we supplied a general guide for what the inter-
views were supposed to bring out, and one of the state staff,
assigned to the job, steered the questioning more for uni-
formity than anything else. At first the board people were as
scared as the applicants, but they soon got over it. Their
questioning centered on local social problems and conditions,
and believe me the answers opened a lot of their eyes. Ques-
tioning by the staff representative tended to bring out atti-
tudes, capacity for observation, and ability to formulate and
express opinion. Of course we had some hurdles. There was
always the danger that looks would count too much — and
there was the man who announced that he proposed to
grade every applicant on 'personal magnetism'."
"If your merit system doesn't go up the spout will you
stick to the same method?"
««T T 7"E certainly will, but with minor changes in the
»V form of the written examination, largely in the way
of simplification, for grading purposes. An examination
must be easy to grade else it becomes too expensive in paid
time. The trick is to work up questions that check knowl-
edge, book learning if you like, and at the same time re-
veal personal social attitudes.
"As for local boards continuing as oral examiners, most
decidedly yes. Nothing ever has put them so much on their
jobs as that experience. They have a better understanding
of the work and of what the staff is up against than ever
before; and they are much more articulate about it. Our
merit system may go up the spout but it will leave something
behind that is worth all the effort it cost. We have some-
thing to build on now, and we mean to build like beavers.
Next time we won't be starting from scratch and next time
it will stick, no matter how much fixing Mist' Harry and
Company do in the meantime."
This is the sixth of the new series of articles, "Miss Bailey
Says . . .," in which that veteran of the emergency relief or-
ganization sums up the results of her first hand observations
of the actual operation of the social security services over the
country and of her discussions with workers close in to the job.
JULY 1937
223
The Common Welfare
Price of Low Wages
THE "most vexing problem in relief" says New York's
Mayor La Guardia, is presented when "starvation
wages" in private industry must be supplemented with pub-
lic relief. The problem is not new nor is it unique to New
York. Every community has it and is baffled by it. New
York has just learned that the cost in relief funds of this
form of subsidy to low grade industry runs close to two
and a half million dollars annually.
But it is one thing to know the facts of a situation and
another to know what to do about it. New York relief
officials frankly admit the dilemma. Supplementation with
public relief funds of substandard wages subsidizes the un-
scrupulous and penalizes the scrupulous employer, and
amounts to a chiseling of the whole wage structure. But
to deal with this "economic atrocity" by removing from
the relief rolls all persons receiving supplementary assistance
would be to jump from the frying pan into the fire. It
would discourage and penalize honest efforts for self-support
and would result naturally in many persons quitting their
"starvation wages" and applying for full relief.
Mayor La Guardia and his advisers are trying to find the
answer to the dilemma. The place to look for it would
seem to be in the area of the minimum wage.
The Merit Principle at Stake
OBSCURED by the heat waves, events in Congress in
late June were such as to alarm those who give more
than lip service to the merit principle in government ad-
ministration. The reorganization bill sponsored by Senator
Robinson, while favoring the merit principle at the lower
levels, would exempt division chiefs and bureau chiefs,
many of whom are now under civil service. The "career"
plan would be distinctly a misnomer for a system in which
the qualified government employe came up against a politi-
cal bulkhead when he rose so far as to merit appointment
as chief of a division. Fortunately the new Railroad Retire-
ment Act has become law, minus an earlier personnel clause
which was strenuously opposed by the Civil Service Com-
mission, but the bill to extend the CCC went to the White
House with provisions that will throw jobs into patronage,
and there are similar clauses in other pending measures.
The most flagrant example of the will to patronage,
however, is probably the rider to the Independent Offices
Appropriation Bill concerning a small group of executive
personnel of the Social Security Board. In spite of a stiff
fight, the House finally acceded to a Senate amendment
which bars use of funds appropriated to the board for the
new fiscal year to pay salaries of experts or attorneys re-
ceiving $5000 or more, unless and until they have been
appointed by the President with the advice and consent of
the Senate. All positions under the Social Security Board
are civil service except those of experts and attorneys —
about 5 percent of the total — and these latter the board
voluntarily placed under the Civil Service Commission for
approval both as to the specifications of the job and the
competence of the individual selected by the board to fill it.
The Senate rider would make it impossible for the board
to pay salaries, after June 30, to about sixty experts and
attorneys so selected, unless, after appointment by the
President, the Senate chose to confirm them. At the head
of the list is Frank Bane, executive director of the board,
long known to readers of The Survey and others through-
out the country as an untiring champion of honest and
efficient government administration.
The National Civil Service Reform League has wired
President Roosevelt to urge his veto of the bill as opening
the way to "senatorial patronage" and demoralization of
the service. Another serious possibility, in the event of an
important change in executive leadership in Washington,
might be to lighten the pressure against the intrusion of
the spoils system into the social security set-ups in the states.
As this is written (June 30) the bill has just been signed.
It becomes increasingly apparent that the merit principle
demands prompt and vigorous rallying of all its friends.
Long Due
OUT of the battle in Congress over the WPA appro-
priation (see page 226) came sudden moves that seem
to assure the appointment of a national commission to study
all phases of the problem of relief and unemployment.
Such a commission long has been urged in various quarters
including the pages of The Survey, but the joint congres-
sional resolution (Murray-Hatch) authorizing it has
languished, apparently for lack of administration favor.
The first of the recent moves came while pressure was
at its height for cutting the WPA appropriation as re-
quested by the President. Almost without discussion the
Senate approved a resolution instructing Vice-President
Garner to appoint a senatorial committee of five to "study,
survey and investigate the problems of unemployment and
relief, including an estimate of the number of persons now
unemployed by reason of the use of labor-saving devices,
mechanical and otherwise. . . ."
For reasons obscure to the layman but clear, it appears,
to the political pundits this move was followed by an easing
up of pressure against the WPA appropriation. The Senate,
say the pundits, with one hand gave the administration
what it wanted and with the other something that it didn't
want — that being current political give and take. The com-
mittee appointed by the vice-president is headed by Senator
James F. Byrnes of North Carolina. Only one of its five
members is believed to favor the present relief policy.
Hardly was the Byrnes committee appointed than the
dormant Murray-Hatch resolution was pulled out of its
Senate pigeon-hole and passed without objection or special
attention. This happened, the pundits put it, because the
administration, in the face of an inquiry by an unfriendly
committee of the Senate, withdrew its opposition.
Be that as it may, the resolution is now in the House
where favorable and relatively prompt action is confidently
expected. The House, however, proposes to change the
make-up of the projected commission substituting for "five
to fifteen well qualified and distinguished citizens" ap-
pointed by the President, a body of nine such citizens plus
three members of the House and three of the Senate. The
resolution directs the commission to "conduct a national
224
THE SURVEY
study of the whole problem of unemployment and relief
and make recommendations looking to a comprehensive,
intelligent and just policy for the future." It appropriates
$50,000 for the purpose. Specifically the proposed commis-
sion would appraise the relative merits of work relief and
direct relief, study the division of financial and adminis-
trative responsibility between federal, state and local units
of government, taking account of the contribution of private
social agencies, and devise a plan for coordinating a long-
time relief program with the programs of such agencies as
the Security Board and the U. S. Employment Service.
Housing Hopes
EARLIER optimism that the Wagner-Steagall low cost
housing bill would be enacted by the present Congress
has given way to uncertainty, although it is said that the
President has high hopes that differences between Senator
Wagner and Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau on
financial provisions of the bill soon will be ironed out and
that it will be enacted.
The bill as introduced would provide government loans
for construction and annual subsidies equal to the amount
of charges not covered by rents. [See The Survey, March
1937, page 80.] Secretary Morgenthau, with an eye to the
funds required by the bill, rejects the annual subsidy idea,
and would substitute for it capital grants, at the outset, of
40 percent of the construction costs of each project.
The President is said to favor the Morgenthau plan,
agreeing that it would put less burden on the government,
and would not commit any future Congress to subsidies.
In the light of European housing history the achievement
of really low cost housing seems more likely under the
Wagner than under the Morgenthau plan. As Senator
Wagner frequently has pointed out, an annual subsidy offers
a constant check against extravagance and profiteering, and
insures a proper rent range.
Admitting the weight of arguments on both sides many
earnest students and protagonists of public housing are
hopeful that a bill will be passed at this session which, if
not wholly ideal, will at least make a start in the right
direction. Indications accumulate of the imminence of a
housing shortage the country over. The urgent need for
low cost housing is incontrovertible. Up to now there is no
evidence that that need can be met by anything short of
generous public subsidy.
The Medical Pot Boils
THE recognition given to birth control at the 1937
convention of the American Medical Association in
Atlantic City last month, alone would have been sufficient
to render this session memorable in social annals. Of broader
significance was the official proposal by the New York
State Medical Society of a national health policy which
followed closely that suggested in the report of the Ameri-
can Foundation [see Survey Graphic, May 1937, page
270] which had been put before President Roosevelt un-
officially by a select group of distinguished physicians.
The New York Society proposed a federal department
of health headed by a physician with tax funds to pay doc-
tors' and hospitals' bills of people who could not themselves
pay for medical care. No more medical charity for them ;
doctors to be paid for service, and to write the ticket for
the plans of service ; always providing that no action be
taken in the direction of compulsory health insurance which,
declared the President of the A. M. A. by some blind reck-
oning, tends "to relieve the individual of his own responsi-
bility." Does this mean that paying your own way — as
millions of otherwise "medical indigents" could do collec-
tively under a contributory insurance plan — is not com-
patible with self-respect?
The New York proposal was turned down by the ruling
authorities of the American Medical Association. President
Roosevelt appears to have indicated unofficially that, as the
government's representative and coordinator of health ser-
vices, he would prefer a Josephine Roche to a Morris Fish-
bein. Yet it is a highly important innovation to have a
large state medical society present publicly and officially
any constructive and far-reaching public program. Medical
progressivism, within its own self-determined limits, seems
at last on the way towards self-expression. The A. M. A.
continues to stall officially but evidently groups within the
profession are working with increased vigor and definiteness
towards a realistic facing of needs and trends, and a public
policy in which doctors might lead and not be driven.
Strings to the Child Labor Bow
CHILD labor legislation is very much in Congress
these days : in the Black-Connery bill [see The Survey,
June 1937, page 193] ; in the Wheeler- Johnson bill which
deals wi'th child labor separately from other labor regula-
tion; in the Barkley bill, which would reenact with slight
modifications the child labor act of 1916, killed by the
Supreme Court; and, finally, in a new amendment to the
constitution, proposed by Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg
of Michigan and favorably reported by the Senate Judiciary
Committee, which would empower Congress to "limit and
prohibit the employment for hire of persons under sixteen
years of age." The old amendment would ". . . limit, regu-
late and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen. . . ."
The National Child Labor Committee favors generally
the Barkley bill on the ground that experience, prior to the
1916 Supreme Court decision, showed that its provisions
worked smoothly and effectively. Since that bill seems un-
likely to get to the floor of Congress the committee is push-
ing for amendments to the Black-Connery bill which would
turn over enforcement of the child labor regulations to the
Children's Bureau under the work-certificate system; re-
move the provision utilizing the prison-goods technique to
bar child-made goods from interstate commerce — called an
"unworkable" procedure as applied to child labor; elimi-
nate also products of industrial homework from interstate
commerce, thus preventing employers from exploiting chil-
dren under cover of the homework system.
Meantime, lest action on the Black-Connery bill be post-
poned beyond this session, the committee is pressing for
amendments to the Wheeler-Johnson bill to simplify the
administrative procedure it proposes in ways that will tend
to stop child labor by preventing children from going to
work rather than by prosecuting offenders.
Finally the committee, undeterred by this year's discour-
aging record in ratification by states, will continue its cam-
paign for the old amendment, not because it fears adverse
court decisions on new legislation but because — and this is
of prime importance — any federal law would reach only
children in industries engaged in interstate commerce, that
is, would reach only about 25 percent of the total number
employed, excluding those in agricultural pursuits. The
committee is concerned with protecting all children and it
proposes to continue its efforts to do so.
JULY 1937
225
The Social Front
WPA- Relief
A FTER a long acrimonious struggle,
•**• sharpest in the Senate, Congress
finally appropriated a billion and a half
dollars for WPA the next fiscal year as
requested by President Roosevelt. Pro-
posed amendments that would have re-
quired fixed local contributions to proj-
ects, one of 40 percent, the other of 25
percent, were rejected by the Senate but
only after debate in which new lines were
drawn.
In any case WPA got its appropriation
to carry on into next winter presumably
from about where it is now. But just
where that is exactly is not apparent at
this writing. Sharp reductions in the rolls
which began in mid-May have proceeded
steadily all over the country. The last
week in May the number of workers
dropped below two million for the first
time since 1935. By the end of June it
probably was down to 1,500,000, possibly
less. An exact figure is not now (June 28)
available.
While, in theory, these cuts were made
with discrimination — "no one in actual
need shall suffer" — in practice, they were
not always so accomplished; perhaps they
could not be in so large an operation. A
new element in selection for dismissal
was length of service, that is persons who
had been longest on the WPA payroll
were most "eligible" to separation from
it. This policy was adopted, it is said, to
meet wide and articulate criticism that
many "veterans" had settled down to
WPA as a way of life. Here again dis-
crimination, though promised, was not
always exercised.
The dismissal program has met with
vigorous protest from the WPA workers
themselves and from many other persons
and organized groups not directly affected.
Even George Bernard Shaw joined with
an indignant cable from England pro-
testing cuts in the theater and arts proj-
ects as "curtailing American culture."
The protests have been most active and
organized in large cities, notably New
York and Chicago, with picketing, demon-
strations and strikes of various kinds and
degrees.
It is already apparent that WPA re-
ductions will backwash on direct relief
rolls — complicating further a situation
already complicated by steadily contracting
state and local funds. How large an in-
crease it will mean is not yet known and
probably will not be during the next
month or two. The full effect on direct
relief rolls is expected to show itself in
the early autumn with the falling of sea-
sonal summer employment by which many
226
dismissed WPA workers may be able to
maintain themselves for a time. The full
effect on many an individual family is
felt here and now.
Case by Case— The Chicago Relief
Administration is engaged in a study of
some 40,000 families, open cases as of
May 15, 1937, which are reported as
having no employable member. The pur-
pose of the study is to determine the
reason for the unemployability of each
individual eighteen years of age or over
and the possibility of rehabilitation.
Schedules call for the full relief history
and the work history for the past five
years of each person over eighteen.
Price of Low Wages— New York
City is expending annually something like
$2,342,000 of its hard-gained relief funds
to supplement low wages in private in-
dustry. Some 5934 men and women in
5405 relief families — almost 3 percent of
the total case load — although employed,
many of them full time, do not earn
enough to support themselves and their
families according to the budgetary stand-
ards of the Emergency Relief Bureau.
Early last winter when it became ap-
parent that supplementary relief was a
mounting problem [see Relief: The Price
of Low Wages, by Charlotte E. Carr,
The Survey, November 1936, page 323]
a study of the home relief rolls was
undertaken at the request of Mayor La
PUGSLEY AWARD
THE editorial committee of the Nation-
al Conference of Social Work has
voted the 1937 Pugsley Award to John M.
Kingsbury of New York for his paper,
Public Welfare and Health: A National
Program, presented at the Indianapolis
meeting before the conference section on
public welfare administration. Honorable
mention went to Winthrop D. Lane of
Trenton, N. J., for his paper, The Paroled
Offender, before the committee on social
treatment of the adult offender; and a
citation for exceptional merit to Sidney
Hollander of Baltimore for his paper, A
Layman Takes Stock of Public and Private
Agency Functions, before the section on
social case work. Mr. Hollander was not
eligible for the award itself since it must
go to a professional social worker whose
conference paper is "adjudged to have made
the most important contribution to the sub-
ject matter of social work."
Guardia, by the research division of the
ERB actively assisted by Frieda Miller
and her staff of the State Labor Depart-
ment. The report is being studied by em-
ployers, economists, social workers and
others in an effort to discover an answer
to what Mayor La Guardia character-
izes as "the most vexing of relief prob-
lems."
Of the whole 5934 persons receiving
relief supplementary to their wages more
than half were men. Some 3469 were on
jobs without tips with a median hourly
wage of 29.2 cents. More than 22 per-
cent earned, according to employer pay-
roll records, less than 20 cents an hour
and 18.6 percent less than 10 cents an
hour. The median wage was about 18
cents less than the lowest hourly wage of
WPA. Of those on jobs with tips the
great majority earned less than 20 cents
an hour. Even when the hourly wage
reached a reasonable figure it was still
necessary to supplement either because
of too-few hours or of larger than aver-
age families.
Both men and women, it was found,
are equally the victims of low wages and
no type of private enterprise is free from
exploitation. Of the employed persons
19.6 percent were engaged in manufac-
turing; 15.5 percent in trade; 3.8 percent
in hotels and restaurants; 12.3 in domes-
tic service; 29.2 in janitorial work and
the rest in miscellaneous occupations.
At the time the study was made last
winter the standard ERB budget for a
family of four was $18 a week; for a
family of five, $20. Of the 5934 persons
covered by the study 90 percent required
relief supplementation because their
wages, even though some of them were
working a sixty-hour week or even
longer, fell short of the minimum stand-
ard of support as set up by the ER
in agreement with the state TERA. The
remaining 10 percent of the group re-
quired supplementation because of part-
time employment or because their fam-
ilies were larger than average.
Agencies Protest— In June Lieut-Col.
B. B. Somervell, WPA administrator
in New York City, ordered the with-
drawal in mid-July of the 1200 recreation
workers hitherto assigned to settlements,
boys' clubs, Scout groups and other private
agencies which have supplied plant and
supervision for their employment. The
move met with instant protest from the
United Neighborhood Houses which held
that it would scrap summer programs
already under way, incoiporate the trans-
ferred workers into public projects un-
prepared to make immediate uie of them
under proper supervision, and leave d
THE SURVEY
tricts unserved where private facilities
are the only resource. The settlements in
no sense questioned the principle that
public employment should be canalized
through public agencies (as was recently
done in the case of the hospitals) but
held that moves in this direction should
be part of a thoroughly grounded plan
for city-wide recreation.
Saving in Jobs— An economy of close
to half a million dollars a year in per-
sonnel costs will be effected by the trans-
fer on July 1 of the functions of the
New York Temporary Emergency Re-
lief Administration to the State Depart-
ment of Social Welfare, says David C.
Adie, commissioner of the department.
The initial personnel of the reorganized
state department numbers 455 against
a staff of about 700 in the two separate
agencies. The budget permits a staff ex-
pansion to 504.
So complicated is the problem of
merging the New York City ERB, its
staff of 10,000 and its case load of 148,-
000, with the city Department of Pub-
lic Welfare that the state board has
permitted an extension of time, possibly
for six months, in which to effect the
merger. Buffalo also has had an exten-
sion as well as six smaller communities.
Better Chance — In an effort to in-
crease the employability of relief re-
cipients the New York ERB and the
local WPA education projects are co-
operating in an experiment for training
typists and stenographers now on relief
whose present skills are inadequate for
private employment. Enrollment for the
training is voluntary with the length of
the course determined by individual
needs. The occupational survey of the
ERB in April showed 305 stenographers
and 810 typists, the great majority of
whom could not measure up to current
labor market standards.
The experiment grows out of the
practical results achieved in the WPA
household training courses where domes-
tics unable to meet current standards
were helped to improve their qualifica-
tions. If the new plan for typists and
stenographers shows results equally
practical it will be extended to other
categories of workers.
Roundy Gome Roundy — The City
of Trenton, N. J. has completed the
cycle of relief policy and come back to
where it was in 1930 when a citizen's
committee provided work projects where
the unemployed "worked out" their food
orders. The city council has sanctioned
and the State Financial Assistance Com-
mission approved a proposal of City
Manager Morton that "it is better for
men on relief to work than to loaf
through the week and just call at the
relief office for their dole." Accordingly
the city will organize various weed-pull-
ing, river-bank repairing projects to em-
Migratory Labor Patterns — Who, what and where is the migratory-casual
worker of the United States is the subject of a recently-published definitive study
by John N. Webb for the WPA division of social research. (The Migratory-Casual
Worker, Research Monograph No. VII.) Examining a sampling of the migratory
working population, the study finds this worker not at all as usually pictured — a
tramp or "worthless" natural wanderer with anti-social tendencies.
"He is instead a competent worker, usually set adrift during a period of un-
employment. Each year he retraces a regular work-pattern which frequently extends
across several states. He is a factor of first importance in the operation of seasonal
agriculture and industry in sparsely settled districts," concludes Howard B. Myers,
division director, in discussing the study.
The study pictures the migratory worker's personal characteristics, the nature
of his employment, and charts his typical migration pattern. It finds him living and
working under sub-standard conditions with sub-standard wages and relates his
situation to society as a whole. His prospects of future improvement are examined
in a final chapter. Mr. Webb finds no quick cure for the problems of migrant labor
but suggests as immediate palliatives some regular direction by employment services,
and a public works program during periods of depression.
ploy as many as possible of the 2302
able bodied men on the relief rolls, a
number which may be doubled as WPA
makes its expected contraction. The men
will be required to work the hours neces-
sary, at the prevailing rate for unskilled
labor, to cover their weekly food order.
Going Down — Whether because of
the season or of improved employment
conditions, the New York City Depart-
ment of Public Welfare reported fewer
local homeless men under care in May
than at any time since 1934. In two
months the case load fell from its 1937
peak of 9454 to 6300. Among these men
fifty-eight nationalities were represented,
but some 85 percent of them were
American citizens and most of the rest
had their first papers. The great major-
ity of them were single and were classi-
fied as unskilled laborers.
More Light— In Part II of Urban
Workers on Relief, just issued, the
Works Progress Administration, divi-
sion of social research, has continued its
analysis of the occupational character-
istics of workers on relief in seventy-
nine cities in May 1934. Whereas Part
I of the study emphasized general char-
acteristics [see The Survey, April 1937,
page 113] the second volume focuses on
the occupational characteristics of the
workers studied and relates them to
varying urban backgrounds. Data pre-
sented are of significance in considering
possibilities for reemployment of work-
ers on relief. The study was designed
to show usual occupations, duration of
unemployment, age, work experience and
chances of reemployment. It throws light
on permanent public assistance needs
through its tabulation of workers who
were unemployed prior to 1929. (Urban
Workers on Relief, Parts I and II,
division of research, WPA, Washington.)
State Action
A RKANSAS was the first state to get
under the wire this year with a
civil service law, followed by Tennessee,
Maine and Connecticut. Merit system
measures with administrative support
still are pending at this writing in Michi-
gan and New Hampshire. Connecticut
had an earlier law which it repealed in
1929 after eight years' trial.
The new Arkansas law, says the Civil
Service Assembly News Letter, pro-
LY 1937
227
vidcs for a genuine merit system free
from the handicaps of veterans' pref-
erence and rigid residence restrictions.
A comprehensive personnel program will
be developed to include a classification
and compensation plan, a scientific recruit-
ing system, employe training and other
in-service activities, and a removal pro-
cedure which will protect competent
employes against political favoritism and
yet facilitate the separation of unsatis-
factory workers.
California — A bill for the reorganiza-
tion of the State Department of Public
Welfare, signed by Governor Merriam
in mid-June, is counted a triumph for the
organized soual forces of the state. The
bill was worked out by the California
Conference of Social Work, in coopera-
tion with other state groups, and has been
actively urged for four years.
The new law provides for a Depart-
ment of Social Welfare with an unpaid
board of seven members appointed by
the governor and with a director ap-
pointed by the board (salary, $6000 to
$10,000) "wholly on the basis of train-
ing, demonstrated ability, experience, and
leadership in organized social welfare
administration." The staff is subject to
civil service. The department will have,
in addition to any other divisions estab-
lished by law, divisions on adult and
family welfare, child welfare, aid to the
needy aged and aid to the needy blind.
It is charged with responsibility for in-
vestigating and reporting on adult and
juvenile probation, state and local public
charitable institutions and "public officers
who are in any way responsible for the
administration of public funds used for
the welfare, relief or maintenance of the
poor." It will advise local public officers
on the administration of poor relief and
supervise the administration of state
aided services.
An interesting feature of the bill is its
provision that the department shall fur-
nish to counties, on request and at cost,
welfare personnel training courses and
services for the establishment of welfare
personnel standards.
Florida — After exhaustive backing and
rilling the Florida legislature finally de-
cided not to renew the life of the State
Board of Social Welfare, established in
1935 on a temporary basis, but to create
a new one. The fight on the issue was
acrimonious seeming to turn more on
personalities than on principles. The act
as finally passed authorizes the governor
to appoint a state board of seven and a
commissioner who shall have been a
resident of Florida for five years and
have had two years of business experi-
ence together with such other qualifica-
tions as the governor may set up. In
many important respects the act follows
closely the general organization under
which the old board functioned, the
changes having been dictated largely for
face s.aving purposes. In fact local ob-
servers say that the act is very good and
that the program under it will be as
good or bad as politics will permit. An
entirely new board, named by the gov-
ernor, has taken office. Conrad Van Hyn-
ing, commissioner under the old regime,
offered his resignation while the bill was
still in debate. It is believed that the
residence requirement, if nothing else,
will result in many changes of personnel
in the state staff.
To carry the new department the
legislature appropriated $3,800,000, to be
raised by increased liquor taxes, which
must cover all forms of aid and security
services as well as administrative over-
head. Much concern is felt over the item
of about $400,000 for aid to dependent
children as this represents only 25 per-
cent of the amount estimated by the old
board as a minimum requirement for the
new program.
Pennsylvania — The two-century-old
poor boards of Pennsylvania are out and
a new system consolidating public assist-
ance and relief into a single state de-
partment is in. After a long drawn bat-
tle, led by Governor Earle supported by
a vigorous state-wide, non-partisan cit-
izens' committee, the legislature enacted
bills which embody the essential recom-
mendations of the Committee on Public
Assistance and Relief submitted to the
governor in January. [See A Program
for Pennsylvania, The Survey, January
1937, page 10.]
The new laws provide:
A unified program of assistance. The
blind, however, will continue to receive
pensions, not assistance based on need.
A state department of public assistance
headed by a secretary at $10,000 ap-
pointed by the governor with the advice
and consent of two thirds of the senate.
A state board of public assistance of
nine members, with supervisory and pol-
icy determining functions, appointed in
the same manner as the secretary of the
department. The state treasurer and
auditor general are specified as members
of the board. The secretary of the de-
partment is not, ex-officio, a member.
County boards of seven members
(Philadelphia and Allegheny counties,
eleven members) appointed in the same
way as the state board with responsibil-
ity for local policies subject to general
policies and minimum standards set by
the state boards.
Abolition of poor boards, the directors
of which with a few exceptions are,
however, assured their present salaries
until the expiration of the term for
which they were elected.
Transfer of all properties (and obli-
gations) now controlled by the poor
boards to county commissioners under
supervision of the department of welfare.
Financing of public assistance admin-
istered by county boards is assumed by
the state. The Appropriations Act pro-
vides $1,500,000 for the administration
of the new state department of public
assistance and $137,150,000 for de-
pendent children, the aged, blind "and
other indigents."
A merit system, its rules and regula-
tions to be set up by the state board
along with an employment board of
three persons appointed by the governor
with the consent of the senate. A last
minute amendment provides that no
applicant for examinations "shall be re-
quired to have had any scholastic educa-
tion in social service work nor to have
had any other special scholastic educa-
tion or special training or experience."
However the law does not prohibit the
employment board from grading educa-
tion, training and experience.
New Hampshire — All state or local
provisions requiring settlement as a sine
qua non for relief will be abolished in
New Hampshire if a bill now before the
legislature and backed by Governor
Murphy is enacted. The bill, worked
out in cooperation with the American
Public Welfare Association, proposes a
system of non-categorical relief with
need the criterion of eligibility, and
classifications used only for convenience.
Among other progressive provisions, it
would integrate state and local admin-
istrations and establish personnel stand-
ards. While provision is made to com-
pensate any subdivision of the state
which suffers unwarranted hardship from
assisting non-residents, the bill would
require localities to provide assistance "to
any needy person who has not sufficient
income or other resources to provide a
reasonable subsistence compatible with
decency and health." If any region failed
to provide such assistance, the state de-
partment would be authorized to provide
it and "charge the cost thereof to those
legally responsible."
Old Age Benefits
VX7ITH the old age benefits program
in full swing, federal administra-
tors at Washington and Baltimore now
are concentrating on clarifying and ex-
pediting procedures. More than twenty-
eight million, applications for old age
benefit accounts have been received. Due
June 30 (but with thirty days grace)
are the first periodic reports from em-
ployers on wages paid employes since
January 1. Henceforth the reports will
be filed quarterly. Informational returns
on wages earned by employes who have
reached age sixty-five since January 1
were expected from 2,766,787 establish-
ments by June 10.
"The successful completion of the in-
itial task of assigning account numbers,"
says LeRoy Hodges, director of the bu-
reau of federal old age benefits, "de-
228
THE SURVEY
pends upon the complete cooperation of
both employers and employes." The
board, in recent announcements, has
urged employers and employes to make
certain that all workers — both those now
employed and those former employes who
have received wages during 1937 — secure
their account numbers and report them
to their employers.
Application forms for social security
account numbers now may be secured
from field offices of the Social Security
Board, 153 of which are open. In cities
where there is no field office, the appli-
cations may be secured from the post
office. They should be returned, how-
ever, to the nearest field office and no
longer to the Post Office Department.
The board especially urges employers
and employes to avoid making more than
one application for a single worker be-
cause of the confusion and possible de-
lays resulting from duplications.
Purely Voluntary — Because many
wage earners sixty-five years of age and
over, who are applying for social security
account numbers, believe that they are
now eligible for federal old-age benefits,
field officials have been instructed to ex-
plain that the issuance of account num-
bers was extended to include workers
beyond sixty-five in order to aid the
states in setting up records for unem-
ployment compensation programs. State
unemployment compensation laws cover
employes of all ages; whereas the wages
received by workers for employment
after they reach sixty-five are not counted
toward old age benefits under the fed-
eral program. The use of the account
number cards, it was explained, will
prove advantageous not only to states,
but also to employes and employers, who
will thus need only one number under
both the federal old age benefits plan
and state unemployment compensation
laws. The filing of applications by per-
sons over sixty-five is, however, purely
voluntary so far as the social security
act is concerned.
Lump Sum Benefits — The Social Se-
curity Board's Claim Service now is
equipped to approve claims at the rate
of one every eight minutes of the work-
ing day, an expansion of adjudication
services which meets a growing influx
of work. During May claims for the
payment of lump sum benefits increased
from a rate of 35 to 250 per day.
It is estimated that about 320,000
persons or their estates will be eligible
for payments in 1937 and that, of this
number, about 125,000 payments will
involve benefits to estates of workers
who die before reaching sixty-five.
Claims actually submitted during the
year may not equal these totals, because
some claimants may not apply for small
amounts, and some claims may not be
filed within the year.
This certification for payment of lump
a
OF MEMBERS OF
5 SETTLEMENTS 2 Y.W. ORGANIZATIONS
4 OTHER CENTERS
WMITf C0UM
ur-
Group work agencies of St. Louis, seeking a clear picture of the people they serve,
recently called on the research department of the Community Council to analyze the
information contained in the registration of members in regular attendance. The analysis,
its results graphically presented in the council publication, Social Studies of St. Louis,
covered the color of members, nativity, sex, age, school attendance, occupations (see
above), religion and length of membership. The findings "compel attention in planning
and program making to the basic facts upon which effective intelligent service rests."
sum benefits now being presented is of
course only supplementary to the "big
show" beginning in 1942, when payments
of monthly retirement benefits to quali-
fied workers over sixty-five will begin.
Findings — The bureau's experience
with claims reveals that approximately
70 percent of wage earners who die leave
a widow or widower. In 50 percent of
the cases where application for death
payments has been filed, no assets have
been reported except the amount to be
certified for payment by the federal gov-
ernment. In line with the board's policy
of simplifying claims procedures and
eliminating unnecessary expense on the
part of claimants, it is announced that
signed physicians' or undertakers' state-
ments will be accepted in lieu of death
certificates.
The board's experience with claims
also reveals that more lump sum benefits
are now being paid in New York than
in any other state. It also indicates that
about 70 percent of all benefits now being
paid are on behalf of workers in estab-
lishments employing less than fifty
workers.
Compensation
DY last available estimates, approxi-
1J mately 18,700,000 workers are em-
ployed in jobs covered by the state un-
employment compensation laws now
officially approved for forty-five states,
the District of Columbia, Alaska, and
Hawaii. At this writing the only states
lacking such legislation are Missouri,
where a law awaits the governor's signa-
ture and Illinois, where a bill which has
passed the Senate awaits House action.
State deposits in the federal Unem-
ployment Trust Fund, with accrued in-
terest, by May 31 totalled $270,538,-
126.94. Federal grants to states to cover
proper costs of administering unemploy-
ment compensation laws amounted, by
the middle of June, to more than $10
million.
A Team — To make sure that unem-
ployment compensation and public em-
ployment services develop hand in hand,
a committee for joint action of the two
federal agencies concerned has been an-
nounced. Frank Bane probably will rep-
resent the Social Security Board, and
Mary LaDame, special assistant to
Secretary of Labor Perkins, the U.S.
Employment Service. Richardson Saun-
ders, assistant to Secretary Perkins, may
serve in place of Miss LaDame.
The new committee will assist the
states in coordinating the development
and administration of their employment
services and unemployment compensation
systems.
Existing federal and state unemploy-
ment compensation legislation contem-
plates close integration of unemployment
compensation with employment service
and places new responsibilities upon state
employment offices. These responsibilities
include: (1) general registration of all
those claiming benefits and the determi-
nation of the continuous availability of
the applicant for work, if he is to con-
tinue to receive benefits; (2) intensive
placement work, involving the mandatory
determination of the worker's usual oc-
cupation and the availability of work;
(3) certification that no suitable work
is available for the applicant — a condi-
tion of eligibility for benefits. Still other
duties may be assigned to meet local
requirements. The suitability of work
offered an applicant must be determined
in accordance with certain requirements,
in the social security act and the state
unemployment compensation laws, which
are designed to protect wage standards
and to guarantee the worker's right to
JULY 1937
229
belong to a labor organization of his
choice. Also, in order to continue to
receive benefits, a worker must continue
to be available for work, a requirement
which necessitates frequent rechecking
by the employment offices.
In effect, these provisions place the
major emphasis in unemployment com-
pensation, not on paying benefits to
workers once they become unemployed,
but on avoiding this necessity by inten-
sive efforts to keep men in suitable jobs
at full pay. Under twenty-two state un-
employment compensation laws, benefit
payments begin in January 1938. Plans
for the expansion of the present state
employment services to meet the needs
of unemployment compensation are al-
ready under consideration.
Summer Problems — Recent amend-
ments to the New York State Unem-
ployment Insurance Law have extended
coverage to approximately 100,000 em-
ployes in the summer hotels and resorts
in that state. Last year only 25,000 such
employes were covered. The number of
employers in the summer hotel and
resort group who are subject to the
law increased from 3000 last year to
nearly 8800 this season.
The amendment responsible for the
greatest part of this extended coverage
is the one which makes employers sub-
ject to the law if they employ four or
more persons for fifteen or more days
during the year. Originally the employer
was not subject to the law unless he
employed four or more persons for
thirteen weeks or more, and thus many
resort establishments were exempt.
Citizen Service
TpHE General Federation of Women's
Clubs has announced, as the next
objective of its health conservation pro-
gram, participation in the nation-wide
campaign against syphilis. Each club has
been advised to secure the cooperation
of health, educational and medical au-
thorities in planning programs treating
the subject and in community-wide edu-
cation projects. Clubs are asked also to
support legislation and appropriations for
diagnostic and treatment facilities, and
individual members to inform themselves
and their families and to insist on pre-
natal Wassermann blood tests.
Leagues in Action — The Newark,
N. J. Junior League through its chil-
dren's theater department treated some
twenty-five thousand children to its pro-
ductions of Cinderella and received more
than eight thousand letters from mem-
bers of its young audiences. Plays were
given in schools in the poorer sections
of the city and became so popular that
the league could hardly keep up with
its schedule. . . . The Chicago League
recently employed a professional social
worker, Ruth Musgrave, as its place-
ment secretary, to work closely with the
Council of Social Agencies. ... A new
family service association is being de-
veloped in Durham, N. C., growing out
of a babies' milk fund formerly spon-
sored by the Durham Charity League
in connection with a clinic. Florine Ellis,
from the Smith College School of Social
Work, the executive, is developing the
new agency with the help of an active
board and a dozen or so volunteers. . . .
The Junior League of Chattanooga is
underwriting the salary of a case su-
pervisor for the family agency of that
city. The Atlanta Junior League is
financing an experiment in parent and
child guidance by paying the salary of a
special worker on the local family so-
ciety staff. The Milwaukee Junior
League is paying for the services of a
psychiatrist for the Children's Service
Association of that city.
Principles —At the recent national
convention of the Association of Junior
Leagues of America, Mrs. Peter L.
Harvie of Troy, N. Y., president, de-
fined the Junior League as "an experi-
ment in creative citizenship." She added
that "all members are encouraged to
educate themselves in all legislative, gov-
ernmental and controversial issues which
touch the life of their communities . . .
in order that they may exercise their
citizenship more intelligently."
St. Louis Volunteers — The depart-
ment of volunteer service of the St.
Louis Community Council, after restudy-
ing the training needs of its volunteers,
now offers three courses: a bird's-eye
view of social work, a course for board
members, and a more specialized course
called "the volunteer in social service."
Total attendance in the three courses
during the year was over two hundred.
Placements of volunteers made by the
department reached 970 during the sea-
son just ended, a number twice as large
as in 1934 and 207 more than last year.
Recreation
'"THE National Recreation Association,
in ite review of the year, says that
municipal expenditures for public recrea-
tion in 1936 were still below predepres-
sion levels, despite widespread advances
in public recreation. Cities have been
slow to shoulder the financial responsi-
bilities they formerly carried, as long as
federal and state emergency funds are
available, the association finds.
Questioning the wisdom of further ex-
pansion, some recreation executives an-
ticipate that maintenance costs might
encroach on funds set aside for leader-
ship. Association studies, looking toward
better recreation planning, have been go-
ing forward in many American cities.
Recreation projects have been surveyed
and training has been offered for mem-
bers of recreation staffs in public and
private agencies.
For Unemployed Men — The City
council of Minneapolis maintains a five
story building which is used not only for
housing older men unable to work be-
cause of physical disability but also as a
recreation center for the unemployed.
Facilities include a large stage and audi-
torium, a game floor, workshop, and
doctors' and dentists' offices. Entertain-
ment programs are furnished by the town
dramatic clubs, orchestras and school
groups.
Leisure in Chicago — A new edition
of the vestpocket directory listing recrea-
tional facilities in Chicago's seventy-five
communities has been issued by the city's
Recreation Commission. Distributed to
policemen, recreation and social workers
and teachers it is a comprehensive guide
to all leisure-time activities provided by
Chicago's public or semi-public agencies.
Paradise — Grover Whalen has an-
nounced the eventual transformation of
the New York World's Fair grounds into
a "recreational paradise" where not "a
single aspect of active recreation and
health education will be overlooked." It
is planned that the first $2 million of net
profits fom the fair will be used to con-
vert the grounds into athletic fields, areas
for lawn games, tennis courts, play-
grounds, swimming pools, a model yacht
basin and an outdoor stage and many
other features. Mr. Whalen said that the
interest will be centered on the "spiritual
and social effects of these developments."
Settlement Summers— Chelsea Park
in New York City is the scene for out-
door movies and sings during the sum-
mer months for the neighbors of the
Hudson Guild. . . . Huntington Club of
Syracuse, N. Y. has a program of sum-
mer trips for girls who like to see the
country and "rough it." . . . Youth Hos-
tels are now so well organized in New
England that it is possible, when walking
or cycling, to find a hostel at the end of
each day's journey. A handbook is avail-
able from the American Youth Hostels,
Inc., Northfield, Mass.
The Public's Health
year the United States looks
forward to a reduction in the num-
ber of deaths in motor car accidents and
with disappointing regularity the toll goes
higher. The worst year of all was 1936,
says the bulletin of the Metropolitan
Life Insurance Company. "Numerous laws
and regulations have been enacted in the
interest of safety. A vast program of edu-
cation has been carried on. . . . The
public press almost daily has drawn
attention to the seriousness of the situa-
230
tion. . . . Yet such an exorbitant death
toll remains that it may be necessary for
the public to consider seriously actual
control of the speed at which automobiles
may be operated, or other equally stern
restrictions."
In Detroit local judges refer certain
traffic violators to a psychopathic clinic
in the recorder's court for physical and
neurological examinations, an intelligence
test, motor ability tests, and a psychiatric
examination.
Against Disease — In a "council of
war" against disease and ill health in
Illinois, executives of national and state
health organizations worked out a
rounded outline of basic health needs for
the state. They include:
More and better organized local health
departments, especially in the smaller
communities and rural areas.
A greater strength of personnel trained
especially for public health work.
The recognition of syphilis as Enemy
No. 1 among the communicable diseases
vulnerable to attack by preventive med-
icine.
The acceptance of immunizing and
antiseptic processes as more effective and
reliable than isolation and quarantine as
a means of controlling respiratory in-
fections.
The realization that a scientifically
selected diet is the cornerstone upon
which to construct good health.
An extension and refinement of en-
vironmental sanitation, particularly with
reference to water, milk, waste disposal
and swimming pools.
The concentration of more effort in
the field of maternal hygiene.
A greater appreciation of the impor-
tance of public education as an essential
factor in the utilization of preventive
medicine.
Rehabilitation — More than ten thou-
sand persons who had been disabled
through accident, illness or congenital
causes were vocationally rehabilitated
and placed in suitable employment in
1936 through the federal and state voca-
tional rehabilitation program, according
to a report by Dr. John W. Studebaker,
U. S. commissioner of education. Re-
ports from the forty-five states, the Dis-
trict of Columbia, Hawaii and Puerto
Rico cooperating in the program, which
was authorized by act of Congress in
1920, show that a total of 44,625 disabled
persons were in process of rehabilitation
at the end of the year. This includes 2127
persons prepared for and placed in em-
ployment, and still being followed up to
ensure permanent rehabilitation; 11,064
persons who have been prepared for em-
ployment and are awaiting placement, and
31,434 still in process of preparation.
The time required for rehabilitation
may range from weeks to years, the
Office of Education points out, and re-
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quires individual case treatment. Average
costs of rehabilitating a disabled person
do not exceed $300, which sum comes
equally from state and federal funds.
Cost of maintenance for these persons
in a charitable or other public institution
would, it is estimated, amount to $300
to $500 annually.
Cotton Camps — The uncertainties
and inadequacies of medical care among
the more or less migratory families in
California's camps for cotton pickers are
revealed in a recent study by the Bureau
of Child Hygiene, State Department of
Public Health, in conjunction with the
State Department of Social Welfare.
Disease, lack of education and child labor
were in evidence in all fourteen camps
studied. Medical care, except for extreme
emergencies, was rarely available. Hous-
ing in general was very bad and income
insufficient to provide basic necessities
in recurrent periods of unemployment —
all of which was reflected in the health
of the families. Although classified as
"migratory" many families, it was found,
do not migrate but live the year round
under labor camp conditions, thus creat-
ing health and relief problems for which
local resources are wholly inadequate.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
231
Only state or federal action and funds,
the study concludes, can cope with the
health and social problems which the
camps present.
Medical Relief— In 1936 the medical
and nursing division of the Emergency
Relief Bureau of New York City served
130,167 home relief families; nursing care
was given to 13,955, pharmaceutical pre-
scriptions to 68,434 and surgical or op-
tical appliances to 18,466. The total ex-
penditure for this service was $1,126,000
of which $783,069 was for physicians'
services, $63,210 for nurses, $200,073 for
prescriptions and $79,648 for surgical and
optical supplies. In 82 percent of the
families acute house-confining illnesses
required two or more doctor's visits.
Health Centers — The New York
Hospital-Cornell University Medical
College will use the $314,000 building
now being constructed for the Kips Bay-
Yorkville Health Center to train medical
students in preventive medicine and pub-
lic health administration. The New York
City Health Department and five local
medical schools will cooperate. . . . First
of New York City's projected chain of
district health centers opened in June,
Seven others will be ready this year.
The ten-year plan provides for the con-
struction of thirty centers by 1945, each
to serve about 250,000 people, a com-
munity the size of Providence, R. I.
Corning — Promised for summer publi-
cation by the Milbank Memorial Fund
is the final report of the metropolitan
unit of the New York health demonstra-
tion conducted from 1924 to 1934 in the
Bellevue-Yorkville district of New York
City with the financial support of the
fund. The report will carry the names
as authors of Dr. C.-E. A. Winslow of
Yale University and Savel Zimand who
was for four years administrative direc-
tor of the demonstration. Final reports
of the rural and medium-sized city dem-
onstrations have already been published,
the former entitled Health on the Farm
and in the Village; the latter, A City Set
on a Hill. Dr. Winslow was the author
of both volumes.
Another Milbank Fund publication of
the summer will be Personnel Policies in
Public Health Nursing, a study of cur-
rent practices governing the appointment
and working conditions of public health
nurses employed by tax supported health
agencies. This study, financed by the
fund and reported by Marian Randall of
its technical staff, was made by the Na-
tional Organization for Public Health
Nursing.
Professional
COMMUNITY Chests and Councils
Inc., has changed its program for the
mobilization connected with the fall chest
campaigns. The big Washington meet-
ing, usually held in September, has been
given up and in its place regional rallies
will be held with possibly a laymen's
meeting in Washington late in the win-
ter. The reason for this change is that
many of the features developed through
the mobilization have now become part
of the year round program of the na-
tional organization in relation to its con-
stituent members.
Spring (1937) community chest cam-
paigns held in thirty-seven cities show a
rise of 6 percent in contributions over
last year. Reports of last fall's cam-
paigns indicated a smaller gain, 4.7 per-
cent over the previous year.
In 382 local drives during the fall,
winter and spring of 1936-37 a total of
$77,673,099 was raised by chests for the
support of 1937 welfare services. This
amount is greater than that of any previ-
ous year except 1931-32, when private
funds were carrying the heavy burden
of unemployment relief.
Louisville, Ky., rallying after the flood
which hit just as the campaign opened,
not only met a large part of its disaster
relief needs but in April brought its
community chest total for the year 11
percent higher than last year.
Mergers — Five Jewish case work agen-
cies of Pittsburgh recently merged
into a single organization, the Jewish
Social Service Bureau. Facts and rec-
ommendations leading to the merger
arose out of the recent Social Study of
Pittsburgh financed by the Buhl Founda-
tion (not yet reported in full), together
with supplementary analyses and study
by the Pittsburgh Jewish Federation
and the agencies involved. The merger
takes in the Jewish Family Welfare As-
sociation, the Jewish Big Brother Asso-
ciation, the Girls' Bureau, Bureau for
Jewish Children and the Service for the
Foreign Born.
The Chicago Home for Jewish
Orphans, Jewish Home Finding Society
and Jewish Children's Welfare Society
have combined to form the Jewish Chil-
dren's League of Chicago, with Jacob
Kepecs, executive director.
Realignments —A new organization
of juvenile court judges, a group ac-
customed to meet with probation work-
ers, was launched at Indianapolis in
connection with the National Confer-
ence of Social Work. Judge Harry L.
Eastman of Cleveland was chosen presi-
dent, Judge George W. Smyth of White
Plains, N. Y., vice-president. A com-
mittee will draft a constitution for the
new organization and submit it to the
1938 meeting in Seattle.
At its recent session in Indianapolis,
the National Conference of Juvenile
Agencies changed its name to National
Association of Training Schools. . . . The
Mother's Aid Association, a National
Conference affiliate, caught the same idea
and emerged as the National Association
for Aid to Dependent Children, with
Gertrude Johnson of St. Paul, Minn,
as new chairman. . . . The National
Children's Home and Aid Association,
most of the agencies in which belong
also to the Child Welfare League of
America, took under advisement the dis-
solution of their fifty-four year old or-
ganization. Action on this proposal was
opposed by some of the group's older
members and was postponed for a year.
Sheep and Goats — Analysis of 259
rejected applications for membership in
the American Association of Social
Workers (1936) show that the vast ma-
jority lacked in professional training.
Of the total rejections, 101 had not
enough technical training even to qualify
for junior membership, while an addi-
tional eighty-nine were ineligible because
they had no technical courses or field
work. Totals by "fields" showed 120 of
the 259 rejected were from emergency
agencies in public social work; fifty-one
were case workers in private agencies
and 44 were from permanent public so-
cial work agencies.
Analysis of new AASW membership
for the first half of 1936 showed that 19
percent were men, mostly in public agen-
cies; 60 percent were engaged "directly
in work with clients" with only 14 per-
cent executives.
With the Libraries — The Special Li-
braries Association has prepared an
elaborate list of subject headings in so-
cial work and public welfare to guide
librarians through the maze of classifi-
cation in these many-angled fields. In
introducing the results of its three-year
project the working committee of the
association's social science group ex-
plains: "The vocabulary of social work
has changed greatly in recent years. . . .
Subject headings for handling books and
pamphlets on social work have not kept
pace with these changing points of view."
(Price $1 from the association, 345 Hud-
son Street, New York.)
The Russell Sage Foundation Library
has issued a bulletin containing a bibli-
ography on group work. (Number 143,
June 1937. Price 20 cents from the
foundation, 130 East 22 Street, New
York.)
Re: Social Action— After "wrestling
manfully" for months with the knotty
question of a policy regarding social legis-
lation, the board and staff of the Chicago
Council of Social Agencies arrived at a
two-part decision, officially adopted by
the board of the council:
"1. Questions of social legislation con-
sidered by the board of the council shall
be reduced to the principles involved and
action taken thereon shall be with respect
to and in terms of these principles rather
than in approval or disapproval of specific
legislative bills.
"2. The executive committee of the
divisions of the council shall be respon-
sible for thorough consideration, study,
findings and recommendations with re-
spect to the underlying principles of ques-
tions involving social legislation."
Commenting on the decisions, the coun-
cil bulletin says: "This doesn't mean that
specific bills may not be studied and dis-
cussed by the council. . . . We will take
our stand on principles, explain specific
bills to our member agencies in the light
of these principles and stimulate their
consideration and independent action."
Wage and Wage Slave — A recent
monograph on salaries and professional
qualifications of social workers in Chicago
includes answers from 1190 of Chicago's
approximately 1400 social workers.
"Standards of professional education were
substantially below a reasonable mini-
mum," says the report, "especially in pub-
lic relief agencies." Salaries struck a me-
dian of $135 for all social workers; for
the public family field, $120, and for all
other fields combined, $150. "These sal-
aries compare unfavorably with those cur-
232
THE SURVEY
I
rent in every other recognized profession,"
the report finds.
A questionnaire sent to former students
of the department of social work of the
Carnegie Institute of Technology brought
157 replies which showed only 1.3 percent
unemployed (besides those married and
"not available for employment"). Eighty-
eight are doing case work, nearly all of
them in Pennsylvania. Only two are re-
ceiving less than $1200; three receiving
$3000 or over; 77 percent in the $1200 to
$2100 group; 21 percent, $2100 or over.
Summer Study— The reception of
summer in-service institutes for teach-
ers in the Indian Service proved so
(gratifying last year that four such sum-
mer schools are being conducted this
season— two in Oklahoma, one in South
Dakota and one in New Mexico. The
institutes are for all classes of educa-
tional personnel including nurses and so-
cial workers outside the service but
working in it, and are so planned that
they may be taken on "educational leave"
time.
An institute on consumer's coopera-
tion, for the general public, sponsored
by the Eastern Cooperative League, is
scheduled for July 11-17 at Massachu-
setts State College, Amherst. Full in-
formation from the league, 112 Charlton
Street, New York.
Gash Prizes— Awards for papers on
technical social work subjects, not to
exceed three thousand words in length,
are announced by Social Work Tech-
nique, 3474 University Avenue, Los An-
geles, Calif. Although "any social work-
er may compete," the editors wish par-
ticularly to hear from "workers on the
front line" and executives of smaller
organizations. Prizes of $25 and $10 for
articles acceptable for publication are
offered. The competition closes July 31.
Bliss, long president of the New York
A.I.C.P., by New York University; Dr.
Thomas Parran, surgeon general, U.S.
Public Health Service, by Wesleyan
University; Dr. James Alexander Mil-
ler, president of the New York Academy
of Medicine, formerly president of the
New York Tuberculosis and Health
Association, and Samuel E. Fels, Phila-
delphia manufacturer and philanthropist,
by the University of Pennsylvania; San-
ford Bates, executive director of the
Boys' Clubs of America, by Northeastern
University, Boston.
Also Ida M. Cannon, chief of social
service, Massachusetts General Hospital,
by the University of New Hampshire;
Robert Moses, commissioner of parks,
New York City and Helen Young,
director of nursing, Columbia-Presby-
terian Hospitals, by Columbia Univer-
sity; Austin H. MacCormick, commis-
sioner of correction, New York City, by
St. Lawrence University; James H.
Hubert, New York Urban League, by
Morehouse College; Victor F. Ridder,
president, and Mary L. Gibbons, deputy
commissioner, New York State Board
of Social Welfare, by Fordham Univer-
sity; Willard W. Beatty, Office of In-
dian Affairs, by Reed College; Josephine
Schain, chairman of the National Com-
mittee on the Cause and Cure of War,
by Smith College.
And speaking of academic occasions,
William H. Pear, general agent of the
Boston Provident Association, this year
celebrated the fiftieth year of his gradu-
ation from Harvard. He writes, "To
me was assigned the job of trying to
reveal to the 130 men left of the class
of "87, what it has meant to be a social
worker this last half century."
laboratories of the New York City De-
partment of Health. Characterizing her as
its "world representative without an ex-
pense account" the American Red Cross
recently honored Mabel T. Boardman
for her thirty-seven years of volunteer
service, one incident of which was raising
more than $2 million for the Red Cross.
... Ida F. Butler, director of the Red
Cross Nursing Service has received the
highest award of the nursing profession,
the Florence Nightingale Medal, pre-
sented by Admiral Cary T. Grayson, for
President Max Huber of the Interna-
tional Red Cross Committee, Geneva.
People and Things
and the commencement sea-
son brought the usual crop of aca-
demic honors to laborers in the social
welfare field and its borderlands. With
complete lack of becoming modesty this
department puts at the head of this
year's compilation of interest to its read-
ers the name of the editor of The Sur-
vey and Survey Graphic, Paul Kellogg,
on whom Wesleyan University, Middle-
town, Conn., conferred the degree of
Doctor of Letters. (He may be D.Lit. to
Wesleyan, but he's still P.K. to us.)
With the returns incomplete and with
apologies for inadvertent omissions here
is a list of recipients of alphabetical
honors of 1937 in "our field":
Mrs. William K. Draper, chairman
of the board, New York Chapter, Amer-
ican Red Cross, by Moravian Seminary
and College for Women; Cornelius N.
JULY 1937
Honors — The National Institute of So-
cial Sciences, at its twenty-fifth anni-
versary, presented medals for "distin-
guished service to humanity" to Wesley
C. Mitchell, professor of economics at
Columbia University; Mary Louise Cur-
tis Bok, founder of the Curtis Institute
of Music, Philadelphia; James Rowland
Angell, president of Yale University; and
J. Edgar Hoover, U.S. Department of
Justice . . . President Roosevelt has been
named the tenth recipient of the Richard
J. H. Gottheil medal of the Zeta Beta
Tau fraternity for "distinguished service
to Jewry." Winifred Hathaway, associate
director of the National Society for the
Prevention of Blindness recently received
the Leslie Dana gold medal for outstand-
ing achievement in the prevention of
blindness. The medal is awarded each
year to a recipient selected by the St.
Louis Society for the Blind. . . . The
George M. Kober gold medal, annual
award of the Association of American
Physicians to the member who has gained
international recognition through his con-
tributions to medicine, this year was given
to Dr. William H. Park, director of
Medical and Social — Dr. Thomas
Milton Rivers, of the Rockefeller Insti-
tute for Medical Research, has succeeded
Dr. Rufus Cole as director of the insti-
tute's hospital department. . . . The new
editor of Understanding the Child, now
sponsored by the National Committee for
Mental Hygiene, is Dr. Henry B. Elkind
of the Massachusetts Society for Mental
Hygiene which formerly published the
magazine. . . . The Illinois Society for
Mental Hygiene has appointed Grace
Weyker, psychiatric social worker for-
merly of the Milwaukee Family Welfare
Association and of the Douglas Smith
Fund of Chicago, as general assistant
The new director of social service at
Beth Israel Hospital, Newark, N. J. is
Minnie Edelschick, formerly of the De-
partment of Public Welfare, Huntington,
Long Island, N. Y.
Lona L. Trott, who has been assistant
director of Red Cross Nursing Service
in the Midwest, has been appointed di-
rector for that area, succeeding Elsbeth
H. Vaughan, who now has reached that
happy state of "devoting her time to per-
sonal affairs."
Announcement has been made of the
appointment of Dr. Harry S. Mustard,
associate professor of public health ad-
ministration at Johns Hopkins University,
as Hermann M. Biggs professor of pre-
ventive medicine and director of labora-
tories at New York University succeed-
ing Dr. William H. Park who retired
from the university last year.
Dr. Gaius E. Harmon, from the Chi-
cago Board of Health, recently became
epidemiologist for the Detroit Depart-
ment of Health, and will have charge of
epidemiology and statistics in the city's
program for tuberculosis control. . . .
Dr. Charles Howe Eller, recently health
officer of Charlottesville, Va., now is
director of the Bureau of Rural Health
in the Virginia State Health Department.
. . . Dr. Alfred E. Masten of Denver
has been named director of the division
of tuberculosis control created by the
Colorado State Board of Health.
Dr. Henry F. R. Watts, of Dorchester,
Mass., has been appointed city health com-
missioner for Boston, Mass., succeeding
the late Dr. William B. Keeler. . .
233
Dr. Franklin M. Foote, of Elizabethton,
Tenn. has been appointed chief of the
division of local health administration in
the Connecticut State Department of
Health, succeeding Dr. Benjamin C.
Horning who was appointed health offi-
cer of Hartford.
New Jobs— The Family Welfare As-
sociation of America has appointed Cora
Rowzee its regional secretary for the
southern territory, John B. Middleton
for the middle Atlantic states and Rose-
mary Reynolds for the Great Lakes
region. With these additions the associa-
tion has a full field staff for the first
time in several years and the largest reg-
ular full time field staff in its history.
Miss Rowzee has been doing special as-
signments for the FWAA; Mr. Middle-
ton has had wide experience in private
agency and emergency relief work in
Pennsylvania; Miss Reynolds has been
supervisor of case work for the public
relief agency in Cleveland, Ohio, and
instructor in case work at Western Re-
serve University. She succeeds Florence
R. Day, who has returned to Western
Reserve after an eighteen months' leave.
Elizabeth Dexter, lately with the New
York City ERB, has joined the staff of
the family service department of the
Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. Elizabeth
Dutcher, who headed the department for
fourteen years, has resigned. . . . R. K.
Atkinson, for eleven years educational
director of the Boys' Clubs of America,
Inc., has accepted the post of director of
the Boys' Club of New York where he
has been part-timing for several months.
Public Service — Dorothea de SchweU
nitz, well known for her research and
writing in the employment field and lately
a U.S. Department of Labor expert, has
been appointed by the National Labor
Relations Board as acting director for
the fourteenth region with headquarters
in St. Louis. She succeeds Leonard C.
Bajork, who becomes acting regional di-
rector at Chicago. . . . John E. Devine,
has resigned as personnel examiner with
the Tennessee Valley Authority to or-
ganize a program for the Social Science
Research Council on the development of
motion picture aids in public employe in-
service training. . . . Harry W. Marsh,
deputy commissioner of public welfare of
New York City, has been appointed by
Governor Cross of Connecticut as direc-
tor of the new state department of per-
sonnel.
Ewan Clague has been promoted to
director of the bureau of research and
statistics of the Social Security Board,
succeeding Walton Hale Hamilton who
will continue as a consultant on research
matters. . . . Mark A. McCloskey, New
York City administrator of the National
Youth Administration, has been appointed
director of the bureau of recreational and
234
community activities of the city school
system.
Dr. Harry C. Storrs of the New York
State School at Wassaic has been ap-
pointed superintendent of Letchworth
Village which, under the direction of the
late Dr. Charles S. Little, became an
outstanding institution for mental de-
fectives. Dr. Storrs worked with Dr.
Little at Letchworth for eighteen years.
Ray L. Huff, for six years parole super-
visor for the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
and one-time chairman of the Washing-
ton chapter of the AASW, recently be-
came general superintendent of penal in-
stitutions for the District of Columbia.
. . . Violet A. Jersawit, formerly with
the Child Study Association of America,
has been appointed probation officer in the
U.S. district court, Southern District of
New York — the first woman probation
officer in that court.
Kansas' new director of unemployment
compensation, under the recently approved
social security program, is William A.
Murphy from the Kansas State Agricul-
tural College. . . Dr. J. D. Smith will
direct the new Division of Unemployment
Compensation for the Nevada social se-
curity program.
London Dispatch — Sir William Bev-
eridge, authority on unemployment, has
been elected master of University Col-
lege, Oxford, to take up his new duties
in October. He will be succeeded at the
London School of Economics by Prof.
Carr Saunders who has held the chair of
social science at Liverpool University for
fourteen years.
Professor Saunders is an international
authority on population problems and has
many publications to his credit. He was
a resident at the first British settlement,
Toynbee Hall, before serving in the
World War and has done much social
research. Eight years ago he spent some
months in America as guest lecturer at
the University of Minnesota and his
appointment to the most important posi-
tion in social science in England will be
welcomed by his many friends in this
country.
Educators — John H. Williams, profes-
sor of political economy at Harvard Uni-
versity, has been appointed dean of the
university's new graduate school of
public administration. The school which
was established by a gift from Lucius N.
Littauer of New York, opened an "ex-
planatory session" last spring at which it
was decided to make the school post-pro-
fessional, to "focus attention primarily
upon those already in government em-
ploy."
Heinrich Bruening, formerly chancellor
of Germany from 1930-32, has been ap-
pointed to lecture on international eco-
nomic policies at the new graduate school.
A voluntary exile, the German scholar
during the past year has given several
special lecture series at Harvard.
Dr. Allan J. McLaughlin, formerly
medical director, U. S. Public Health
Service, has joined the faculty of the
division of hygiene and public health at
the University of Michigan. He will offer
courses in community health problems and
epidemiology.
Elected — The National Conference of
Jewish Social Welfare at its recent an-
nual meeting chose as officers: president,
Harry Greenstein of Baltimore; vice-
presidents, Joseph J. Schwartz of Brook-
lyn, N. Y. and Israel S. Chipkin of New
York; treasurer, Joseph E. Beck of
Philadelphia and secretary, Moses W.
Beckelman of New York. . . . The
Church Conference of Social Work this
year elected: chairman, Worth M. Tippy
of New York; vice-chairman, Sue Flan-
nigan of New York and secretary, L.
Foster Wood, also of New York.
Dr. Irvin Abell, professor of surgery
at the University of Louisville School of
Medicine is president-elect of the Ameri-
can Medical Association, to take office
at the association's eighty-ninth annual
meeting next year in San Francisco. The
American Public Welfare Association has
chosen as president, Charles F. Ernst,
director of the Washington State Depart-
ment of Welfare; vice-president, former
U.S. Senator Frederic C. Walcott, now
welfare commissioner of the state of
Connecticut.
Timothy N. Pfeiffer of New York is
now president of the National Probation
Association, an office held by Charles
Evans Hughes, Jr. for the past five years.
. . . Dr. Robert H. Riley, director of the
Maryland Department of Health, has
been elected president of the Conference
of State and Provincial Health Authori-
ties of North America. . . . Dr. James
G. Townsend, director of health in the
Office of Indian Affairs, has been elected
president of the District of Columbia
Tuberculosis Association, succeeding Dr.
William Charles White. . . . Officers
for the coming year for the American
Society for the Control of Cancer are:
president, Dr. F. F. Russell, Harvard
University; vice-president, Dr. J. J. Mor-
ton, Jr., Rochester, N. Y.
Following a hotly contested election,
unique in the history of the California
Conference of Social Work — where nom-
inating committee choices are the rule —
the conference elected for the coming
year: president, Ralph Jenny, San Diego;
vice-president, Richard M. Neustadt
and treasurer, Bruce Dohrmann, both
from San Francisco. New regional vice-
presidents are: Mrs. Hancock Banning,
Jr., Pasadena; Dorothy Wysor Smith,
Los Angeles; Reuben Resnik, San Fran-
cisco; and A. Van Phinney, Sacramento.
Anita Eldridge continues as secretary.
THE SURVEY
Readers Write
Up for Air
To THE EDITOR: The spectacle of a
town coming up for air between floods
is in many respects amazing. Nearly four
months have passed since 80 percent of
the area of this city of 50,000 people
was bathed in some fifteen feet of water.
From a town of desolation a boomtown
now has emerged where hotels turn peo-
ple away night after night; where sec-
ond rate restaurants sell food at first
rate prices and are filled to capacity three
times a day; where the furniture stores
have expanded to meet the demand for
kitchen cabinets, overstuffed couches, bed-
room suites and the like.
Strangest of all post-flood aspects is
the vigorous cheer with which people
work at renewing their homes in the
low areas without any assurance that
they will not be flood-swept again next
winter. People hundreds of miles from
the river basin may think this stupid,
but in a town where only the well-to-do
can afford to live on "the hill" there is
nothing else to be done. How can a fam-
ily move away when work is fairly
steady in Portsmouth and not at all sure
in a strange town?
Ugliest aftermath, aside from dirt and
debris, are the evidences of exploitation.
Prices of furniture have so risen that a
sum that would have bought a fairly de-
cent couch or cabinet in January now
will buy only the cheapest article. Rents
too are up by one third or one fourth,
even though most of the cleaning was
done by the tenants. Perhaps everyone
in the town suffered to some extent, but
again the old story is renewed: "It's the
little guy that bears the brunt."
Portsmouth, Ohio KATHRVN CLOSE
Bouquet Department
To THE SURVEY:
You have a great paper and it strikes
the spot others never hit or find. — T. D. H.,
Ohio.
The Survey is one of my main props
against dismay in this changing world. —
B. c. B., Michigan.
I read it from cover to cover and am
always filled with admiration that the
social work profession has such a fine
journal. — i. c., Illinois.
I have learned to appreciate the quality
and methods of discussion as carried on
in The Survey until it is almost indis-
pensable.— E. L. L., West Virginia.
If every young college student and
new worker and every board member of
a social or health agency could start with
The Survey as one of his sources of
stimulation, there would be a guarantee
of complete in tuneness with the times. —
J. L. F., Washington, D. C.
I find your magazine instructive and
enlightening in the field of social service.
Moreover it is entertaining and its ma-
terial easly digested. — w. E. s., Massa-
chusetts.
In common with many other social
workers I have an increasing respect and
appreciation for the contribution that
The Survey is making to fundamental
social thinking. — E. N. P., Washington.
To THE SOCIAL FRONT:
Early this year the editors asked "gentle
reader" for candid comment on the digest
form of the department, The Social
Front, its interest and usefulness.
To quote Spanky McFarland, it's "okey
doke." A good job. Keep it up. — s. B. M.,
Ohio.
Count my vote in favor of a continu-
ance of those interesting pages. — M. p. N.,
Iowa.
O.K. in general, but I miss paragraphs
on housing. Yours for more and better
housing news. — G. T. H., Virginia.
This not particularly gentle reader
reads its first. I should hate to see it dis-
continued.— R. T. L., Washington, D. C.
I read it first of all for its concise
presentation of the latest social byways,
so to speak. The section is appropriately
named. — L. T., New Jersey.
I find it very useful and should like
it continued. In these days of condensa-
tions it is comforting to turn to a con-
densation that is so admirably done. —
L. s., Michigan.
It is invaluable. It enables me to keep
my own information abreast of the times
and also enables me to give our laymen
a general interpretive point of view.
My work would be handicapped without
it. — c. L. D., California.
Finally, a grain of salt —
I never read it as much as I think
I'm going to. The main headings are
challenging, but there's something sort
of spotty about the content. The sub-
headings seem to be aping Time. I like
The Survey better. — M. S. M., Pennsyl-
vania.
To Miss BAILEY:
Congratulations on the interpretation
of social security at work. — P. A., Min-
nesota.
You're darned right — Children Aren't
Trash (March) and this article will help
me drive it in to my county. — R. B., In-
diana. ,
Her skill is interpreting the reality of
the social security drama. — H. c., New
York.
Congratulations on the new Bailey
series. Luck Isn't Enough (May) was
swell — very soundly and courageously
said. — E. s., Washington, D. C.
I am following the new series with
great interest. The pamphlets of the old
series are recommended reading in our
sociology course. — p. N., University of
Michigan.
I have just read Miss Bailey's com-
ment on state review of cases, (Security
Has Its Growing Pains, February) and
I think it is swell. It makes the point
more effectively than a report ever could.
— L. T. R., Washington, D. C.
The new series is being read here with
deep interest. Every article raises ques-
tions and touches on points that are vita)
in this state. It is grand to know that
Miss Bailey is right with us, not just
reading reports but actually watching
the wheels go round. — s. j., Minnesota.
The articles give me the jitters when I
think how much of what Miss Bailey
sees is happening right here though I
know that she has never been to see us.
It is just what we need and want and this
new series will mean much to all of us
who are trying to meet the realities in
this new development of public welfare. —
w. M., Kentucky.
To THE CONFERENCE STORY :
Allow me to express my appreciation of
the excellent account of the Indianapolis
Conference. Such reporting furnishes an
immediate and timely review which stim-
ulates discussion and furthers the de-
velopment of opinion.
FRANCIS MCLENNAN VREELAND
President, Indiana State Conference of
Social Work
The Survey's report of the Indianapolis
meeting of the National Conference is
masterly. I was not there, but this ac-
count gave me a picture that I would
not have believed possible.
I was particularly interested in what
your reporters said about the machinery
and the Frankenstein qualities of the con-
ference. I hope, now that this is out into
the open, that we are really going to dis-
cuss the organization of the conference
and see that something is done so that
"the front of social work will not lose
its prestige. . . ." BERTHA McCALL
National Association for Travellers Aid
and Transient Service
I have just read the report in The
Survey and I should say the next best
thing to being present at Indianapolis was
to read that article. I gather from people
who were present that your reporters
sensed the feeling of the gathering and
expressed the general trend of opinion
most accurately.
EDWARD B. UNDERWOOD
The Salvation Army, New York
JULY 1937
235
Book Reviews
Health in Tabloid
NATIONAL HEALTH SERIES, prepared under
the auspices of the National Health Council.
Funk and Wagnalls. 20 Vols. Price 35 cents
each, 3 for $1, postpaid of The Survey.
ADOLESCENCE, by Maurice A. Bigelow
CANCER, by Francis Carter Wood
DIABETES, by James Ralph Scott
EXERCISE AND HEALTH, by Jesse Feiring Williams
FOOD FOR HEALTH'S SAKE, by Lucy H. Gillett
HEAR BETTER, by Hugh Grant Rowell
How TO SLEEP AND REST BETTER, by Donald A.
Laird
LOVE AND MARRIAGE, by T. W. Galloway
STAYING YOUNG BEYOND YOUR YEARS, by H. W.
Haggard
TAKING CARE OF YOUR HEART, by T. Stuart Hart
THE COMMON COLD, by W. G. Smillie
THE COMMON HEALTH, by James A. Tobey
THE EXPECTANT MOTHER AND HER BABY, by R. I.
DeNormandie
THE HEALTHY CHILD, by Henry L. K. Shaw
THE HUMAN BODY, by Thurman B. Rice
TUBERCULOSIS, by H. E. Kleinschmidt
VENEREAL DISEASES, by William F. Snow
WHAT You SHOULD KNOW ABOUT EYES, by
F. Park Lewis
WHY THE TEETH, by Leroy M. S. Miner
YOUR MIND AND You, by George K. Pratt
A MINIATURE health library avail-
able at a nominal price, this series
provides a rich source of helpful and
authoritative information about various
aspects of individual and community
health. Each volume is written in plain,
everyday language by an author eminently
qualified to discuss his specific topic. Six
of the books are fundamental to a broad
conception of health, four are especially
designed for parents, and others deal with
specific diseases or impairment of special
organs. Teachers, public health and social
workers, board members of various types
of organizations and other laymen will
find this new series a valuable guide in
consideration of health problems con-
fronting men, women and children.
The Human Body, by Thurman B.
Rice, gives in simple, easily understood
language the anatomy and physiology of
the human body with a consideration of
personal hygiene and public health. Ex-
ercise and Health, by Jesse Feiring Wil-
liams, considers the relation of health to
exercise, warning against faddists and
cults and suggesting exercises for various
purposes with photographic illustrations.
Food for Health's Sake, by Lucy H.
Gillett, might be on every housekeeper's
shelf beside the cook books. Food needs
of a family, practical menus for children,
the protective elements — vitamins and
their sources — are discussed. How to
Sleep and Rest Better, by Donald A.
Laird, is a practical treatise on the sleep-
ing habits of many types of people of all
ages, with a report of experiments in
testing soundness of sleep and restfulness.
The Common Health, by James A.
Tobey, describes the services of the na-
tional, state and local health agency as
well as of the physician in the prevention
of disease and the promotion of health.
In Love and Marriage, T. W. Gallo-
way cites scientific backing for his belief
that human love at its best is the supreme
attainment in all the range of our de-
velopment; that monogamous marriage,
home and family life are the best and
most successful of our social institutions;
that failures are due to a lack of under-
standing which, by using our knowledge,
we can largely correct.
The Expectant Mother and Her Baby,
by R. L. DeNormandie, covers the vari-
ous steps of health care needed during
pregnancy for the benefit of both mother
and baby and gives practical suggestions
on caring for the baby's health and for
its proper development, free from disease.
The Healthy Child, by Henry L. K.
Shaw, concerns itself chiefly with the
runabout child between two and six years
of age, emphasizing factors of normal
mental and physical growth and develop-
ment, habits and character training.
Adolescence, by Maurice A. Bigelow,
deals with the biological and sociological
aspects of adolescence and youth in rela-
tion to the transition from childhood to
adult life. "Parents and teachers should
try to find out how each adolescent indi-
vidual views his own problems and then
cooperate with him in trying to find a
satisfactory solution. There is no place
for mass handling of the problems of
youth," says Dr. Bigelow. Staying Young
Beyond Your Years, by Howard W.
Haggard, deals with the care of the
body in middle and later life.
Hear Better, by Hugh Grant Rowell,
presents the philosophy and methods un-
derlying modern conservation of hearing,
including the mechanism and care of hear-
ing organs and how to make the most of
the situation when hearing is impaired.
What You Should Know About Eyes, by
F. Park Lewis, gives constructive advice
on how to preserve or improve eyesight.
Why the Teeth, by Leroy M. S. Miner,
discusses teeth in their relationships to
beauty, utility, and health, including re-
cent advances in the preservation of the
teeth and the prevention of tooth decay.
The Common Cold, by W. G. Smillie,
presents useful information on the cause,
effect, prevalence and treatment of this
widespread infection. Tuberculosis, by
H. E. Kleinschmidt, embraces the cause,
spread, treatment and prevention of tu-
berculosis, emphasizing the duties of citi-
zens, patients and the community. Help-
ful charts and pictures are included.
Venereal Diseases, by William F.
Snow, is a non-technical discussion of the
causes, spread, treatment, cure and pre-
vention of syphilis and gonorrhea, with
consideration of the roles of the physician,
the nurse and the social worker. Lines
of attack are suggested.
Taking Care of Your Heart, by T.
Stuart Hart, covers the essential elements
of prevention and treatment of heart dis-
ease, and is useful as insurance against
carelessness and neglect for well or handi-
capped persons. Cancer, by Francis Car-
ter Wood, gives briefly what the layman
needs to know about the nature and cure
of this disease. Emphasis on early diag-
nosis by a competent doctor, a warning
against quacks, and suggestions for pre-
vention are featured. Diabetes, by James
Ralph Scott, sketches the historical back-
ground, occurrence and growth of inci-
dence of the disease (with chart illustra-
tions) and describes treatment methods,
including the use of insulin, complications
and prevention. An appendix gives height-
weight tables by age, and lists values of
various foods and recipes for diabetics.
Your Mind and You, by George K.
Pratt, describes how the mind may be
friend or enemy and how it may be
enlisted as an ally. The mental hygiene
movement is traced, and the responsi-
bility of parents and community is
stressed.
Yale University IRA V. HiscocK
Two Theories
EDUCATION ANT) THE CLASS STRUGGLE,
by Zalmen Slesinger. Covici-Friede. 312 pp.
Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
IV/fUCH concerned over impending so-
cial change in this country, "Zalmen
Slesinger has analyzed with misgivings
its direction as envisioned by the "liberal
educator." Mr. Slesinger, who is Pales-
tinian-born, came to the United States
in 1922 and since has studied at leading
American universities. He has chosen
William H. Kilpatrick and George
Counts as accepted spokesmen of the
liberal group and points out that their
vision of social change is fundamentally
bound up with the concept of the United
States as a classless society. Apparently a
confirmed Marxist, he devotes the greater
part of his book to proving that by all
observable phenomena our society is defi-
nitely class-structured and that any plans
likely to influence its future must be made
in recognition of this fundamental fact.
Mr. Slesinger argues that the demo-
cratic technique supported by the liberal
educator is not an adequate tool of class
abolition, because the dominant capital-
istic class is in control of governmental
machinery and will never peaceably abdi-
cate its present position of power. He
further argues that our laboring class
lacks class consciousness and any unity
of objective and therefore finds itself
continuously at a disadvantage in at-
tempting to defend its rights politically.
A further weakness in the program of the
liberal educator is his willingness to
separate economic from non-economic
values such as racial, religious and na-
tionalistic concepts. His declared objec-
tive cannot be realized without a recon-
struction of our entire social mentality.
236
Basically, the author contends that the
proposed remedies for our national ills
are inadequate because they are piece-
meal and fail to envision all of the factors
which are inextricably bound up in any
attempted solution of our economic prob-
lems. Mr. Slesinger then offers in a brief
chapter the Marxian solution of the prob-
lem, which he believes affords greater
prospect of ultimate success in achieving
a successful resolution of our present
rather chaotic condition.
The volume is interesting and stimu-
lating, but one can easily accuse the au-
thor of betraying a naivete similar to
that which he attributes to the liberal
educator in the structure which he so
airily sketches. Having rejected as inade-
quate all of the agencies upon which the
liberal educator depends for the accom-
plishment of his purposes because they are
at the moment in control of the capitalistic
or dominant class, Mr. Slesinger then finds
himself dependent upon the same agencies
for the accomplishment of his more revo-
lutionary purposes. After having recog-
nized that one of the stereotypes con-
sistently used by the capitalistic press in
arousing opposition to liberal movements
of all kinds in this country is fear of
violence or revolutionary activity, he
makes what appears to this reviewer to
be the wholly untenable assumption that
the whole case for economic reorganiza-
tion would be immensely strengthened by
the frank adoption of a violently revolu-
tionary approach.
The two positions debated in this vol-
ume are both at the moment highly theo-
retical. No system has yet yielded to suc-
cessful economic reorganization of the
type envisioned either by the liberal edu-
cators through the democratic process or
by Mr. Slesinger through the Marxian
process. Mr. Slesinger has shown clearly
how tenuous is the prospect of success
of the type of social reconstruction which
he and the liberals both agree is desirable.
While calculated to be disheartening to
some, his demonstration is healthy read-
ing for those who have enlisted for the
duration of the struggle. The fact that
his proposed solution appears more un-
tenable than the position which he at-
tacks, does not lessen the force of many
of his arguments.
WILLARD W. BEATTY
Director of Education
Office of Indian Affairs
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
THE DYNAMICS OF THERAPY
IN A CONTROLLED RELATIONSHIP
By
JESSIE TAFT,
A.B., Ph.D.
"One of the most valuable introductions to the emotional life of child-
hood that the literature of social work has produced. It will be read
with profit by those who in any way have to do with children. Above
all, it is a philosophy of life in which the reader will find insight into
human problems and a call to spiritual adventure." — Survey.
"To school teachers, social workers, psychologists and mental hygiene
therapists it offers valuable material and a point of view that is of
tremendous significance. The therapy of which Dr. Taft writes is the
finest kind of an educational experience in which the integrity of the
individual is never violated and in which the therapist acts as an
objective, understanding observer who assists but never forces." —
Parents.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
New Vork
92.75
HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL WORK ENGINEERING
By JUNE PURCELL GUILD and ARTHUR ALDEN GUILD
A book valuable to public welfare workers, social case workers,
medical workers, and those employed In other fields of social work
by providing methods of organizing to meet the social problems of
their communities. Agency board members join professional social
workers in proclaiming Social Work Engineering as something new
in the field of social organization and financial support, practical,
readable, authoritative.
$1.50 prepaid •from The Survey
The Whack Method
THE SCHOOL AT THE CROSSROADS, by
Thurra Graymar. Funk and Wagnalls. 241 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
A CLASSROOM teacher with opinions
of her own, Thurra Graymar here
says what she thinks.
Miss Graymar finds progressive educa-
tion, as practiced in our schools, wanting.
She insists that the child needs discipline,
that he respects a firm teacher, not a
wishy-washy one. The story is already
classic of a child asking pathetically,
"Must I do what I want?" She has no
use for this new education which permits
a child to bedevil a teacher and throw a
class into an uproar — but the dear child
must not be touched! A forceful whack,
she insists, will often perform greater
miracles than hours of reasoning.
A great deal of bunk, she believes, has
been written about the child's natural
creativeness. She takes issue with Dreiser,
who, praising Russian education, tells of
a hat casually handed out to the children,
which became the basis for all sorts of
learning, including textiles, chemicals,
manufacturing, and so on. Miss Graymar
is skeptical. She admits not knowing Rus-
sian children, but her knowledge of
American children leads her to believe
that the latter, if presented with the
same situation, would promptly use the
hat for a football.
Miss Graymar finds fault with pro-
gressive education as practiced in today's
schools. With this, the reviewer is in
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
237
hearty agreement. The fault, however,
lies not in progressive education, but with
the large number of stupid principals,
supervisors, yes and teachers, who do not
understand its philosophy. In the name
of worthy causes, many crimes have been
committed, but against no cause has so
much sinning been done as against that
of progressive education. When people
who do not understand what progressive
education implies try to graft faintly un-
derstood notions on a gangling system top
heavy with outmoded traditions, the un-
fortunate results described by Miss Gray-
mar should be expected.
New York SAMUEL TENENBAUM
Urbane Textbook
SOCIETY: A TEXTBOOK OF SOCIOLOGY, by R. M.
Maclver. Farrar and Rinehart. 596 pp. Price
$3.75 postpaid of The Survey.
IN its new dress Society: Its Structure
and Changes (1931) remains the most
adult and urbane of American textbooks
of sociology. Revised and in part rewritten
to render it more comprehensible to the
undergraduate, it is still a volume that
will repay any reader who can stand the
shock of rinding a textbook that is a work
of literature.
The school of sociology that it repre-
sents is one that is interested in the
attitudes, interests and interrelationships
of men ; that is, in society. Consequently
it makes a merit of neglecting population,
culture, and those ill-defined disjecta
membra called social problems.
W. REX CRAWFORD
University of Pennsylvania
Related to the Universe
AUTHORITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. Har-
vard Tercentenary Publication, Harvard Uni-
versity Press. 371 pp. Price $3 postpaid of
The Survey.
TN a day when the old quip about
"knowing more and more about less
and less and less" is hurled repeatedly
at specialists and when "experts" are
regarded as "ordinary people away from
home," the present volume lays a deserved
tribute at the feet of those who have
specialized in one field of human knowl-
edge but who have also realized the rela-
tionship of that field to the essential unity
of learning as a whole. The book is the
fruit of one of the three symposia con-
ducted at the Harvard Tercentenary,
and is concerned with consideration of
the economic, social, political and intel-
lectual factors in the structure of society
which act upon the individual through
social institutions and through accepted
ideas. The important contributions to
thought contained in the whole, and
especially in the papers of Mitchell,
Dewey, Maclver, Corwin and Kelsen
are such — in the words of Chief Justice
Holmes — as to connect the subject with
the universe and to "catch an echo of
the infinite, a hint of the universal law."
Barnard College JANE PERRY CLARK
Dose for Enthusiasts
THE PROBLEM OF ANXIETY, by Sigmund
Freud, M.D. (Translated from the German by
Henry Alden Bunker, M.D.). Norton. 165 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
A BOUT twelve years ago the atten-
tion of psychoanalysts was called to
the problem of anxiety through the em-
phasis placed by Rank upon the circum-
stances of its initial stimulation in human
beings, in the act of birth. Rank's over-
enthusiasm about this ingenious idea
caused considerable confusion which for
most psychoanalysts was resolved by the
appearance in 1926 of this classical study
by the founder of psychoanalysis. It is a
highly technical book but written in
masterful style — conservative, modest, ut-
terly scientific in its tone and content.
An English translation some years ago
was deemed unsatisfactory but the new
translation by Dr. Bunker is excellent.
The substance of the book cannot be
reduced to a brief summary, but the
theme is this: that anxiety arises from
both external and internal sources and
may be relieved by the formation of
symptoms or inhibitions (either one or
both) which serve to protect the indi-
vidual against the danger sensed. This
danger may be real or unreal in the
eyes of others. One's own aggressive
wishes, for example, may stimulate
anxiety on account of the consequences
that would follow the expression of such
aggressions; these consequences would
be not only the reactions of society but
also the reactions of the conscience.
The more such anxiety relates to the fear
of oneself, one's conscience, the more
neurotic it may be considered. One's
conscience, however, is distantly related
to reality, especially social reality as it
is interpreted by the parents and others
who surround the child. Hence all
anxiety is always related directly or in-
directly to social factors, as individually
interpreted. This Freud makes very clear,
Some recent enthusiasts in social psy-
chology should reread this book.
KARL A. MENNINGER, M.D.
Topeka, Kan.
With Authority
ZONING: THE LAWS, ADMINISTRATION, AND
COURT DECISIONS DURING THE FIRST TWENTY
YEARS, by Edward M. Bassett, Russell Sage
Foundation. 275 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The
Survey.
'T'HIS scholarly and well documented
*• discussion of the origin, legal develop-
ment and present status of zoning in this
country, is written by the leading author-
ity on the subject. Starting with the estab-
lishment of the first comprehensive zon-
ing regulations in New York City in 1916,
Mr. Bassett treats the many aspects of
this important function of municipal gov-
ernment, now in operation in more than
1200 municipalities. Topics include the
relation of zoning to state constitutions,
state enabling acts for zoning, the adop-
tion and amendment of zoning ordinances,
zoning districts, non-conforming buildings
and uses, board of appeals, court proce-
dure, criminal proceedings, contractual
relations and buildings and their uses. The
last fifty pages of the volume are devoted
to a bibliography and an index of zoning
cases in the United States.
Lou LA D. LASKER
First Hand Testimony
LEARN AND LIVE — THE CONSUMER'S VIEW OF
ADULT EDUCATION, by W. E. Williams and
A. E. Heath. Marshall Jones Company, 271 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
tJERE is an exciting book, largely
made up of personal accounts of
the struggle against circumstance in the
pursuit of learning, and of the joys and
disappointments accompanying adult edu-
cation. The evidence comes from students
of Ruskin College and Tutorial Classes,
and was gathered in an enquiry conducted
by the British Institute of Adult Educa-
tion. Since the education discussed is
strictly non-vocational, it was undertaken
by the students really as learning for
living and not as learning for livelihood.
The authors call it "a testimony got by
education out of industrial life." They
have very wisely let the testimony speak,
limiting their own words to brief and
pungent summary and comment. Learn
and Live is compulsory reading for any-
one wishing to understand what the stu-
dent gets out of it. WINIFRED FISHER
New York Adult Education Council
Reality Restored
THE SHORT CONTACT IN SOCIAL CASE
WORK: A STUDY OF TREATMENT IN TIME-
LIMITED RELATIONSHIPS, by Robert S. Wilson.
Published by National Association for Travelers
Aid and Transient Service. 2 vols. 420 pp.
Price $2.50 per set postpaid of The Survey.
COCIAL workers will want to add
these two pathfinding volumes to their
own libraries immediately. The first vol-
ume on theory is technically written and
presupposes a knowledge of case work
theory and practice. Its purpose is to
study the modifications of philosophy and
attitudes and the usual processes of in-
vestigation, diagnosis and treatment which
are necessitated by time-limited contacts.
Two chapters analyze the application
of these modified techniques to Travel-
ers Aid and Transient Service, public as-
sistance programs, and relief cases. The
intake function which is common to every
agency, counseling and administrative
problems are also considered.
The second volume is made up of illus-
trative cases — the human being and the
human problem back of the social work-
er's professional language and techniques.
Board members and volunteers, as well
as employed social workers, will find this
second volume conducive to understanding
of the types of problems in certain fields
of social work, what the social worker
does about them and why. Short sum-
maries at the end of each case point to
the processes in treatment and throw
light on the results achieved.
Lengthy and complicated forms of
treatment, semi-psychoanalytic techniques
and "deep therapy" are being developed
in a few fields of social work, and most
of the case work writing of recent years
has dealt with these involved methods.
At the same time, the practice of case
work generally has had to make enor-
mous adaptations to actual conditions
which call for speed, large case loads,
rapid and practical steps to meet emerg-
encies, fleeting and widely-spaced inter-
views. In recent years social workers who
have tried to cool off their fevered spirits
with professional bedside reading after the
day's hurly-burly frequently must have
felt, as has this reviewer, that the gap
between theory and practice has grown
into a gulf that nothing can bridge. Prac-
titioners have had a sense of increasing
futility and loss of professional dignity
because of what seemed to them the ex-
tremely slight connection, even the violent
238
THE SURVEY
contrasts, between what they were ac-
tually doing and what their professional
literature indicated that they ought to be
doing, or were expected to do.
The major contribution of this book is
in a restoration of sanity, reality and
professional values to the practical field
of case work which is, and will probably
remain, largely a field of short contacts.
It is the first substantial piece of current
professional literature which is designed
to give emphasis, dignity and a philosophy
and outlook to the practice of case work
on the time-limited basis which actually
relates to the conditions of practice.
The constructive results which The
Short Contact presents as theoretically
and practically possible, call for the high-
est type of skill, training and experience.
Every social worker who reads the book
will gain a renewed sense of the values
inherent in all her contacts with people in
difficulty and an increased respect for the
task of making each contact count.
DOROTHY WYSOR SMITH
Travelers Aid Society of Los Angeles
Behavior Itemized
THE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF
BEHAVIOR-PROBLEM CHILDREN, by
Harry J. Baker and Virginia Traphagen.
Macmillan. 393 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
HTHIS very industrious text of sixty-
six behavior items includes every-
thing one can find out about a child in
two to three hours. The items are gath-
ered by "adjustment workers," by which
is meant, presumably, school teachers or
psychologists. These busy workers fit the
"detailed items of diagnosis" on a "be-
havior scale" and are thereby equipped
with "the possible causes which are
known to be significant in the diagnosis
of behavior maladjustments."
An example of the rating of accidents
will be sufficient to demonstrate the
method employed.
A child examined on the behavior scale
will get a score of 5 — which is excellent
— if, for example, he has never had a bad
accident. If he has had one accident he
will get a 4; if two or three, a 3; if six
or more, he will get the very low score
of 1. He and his parents will be rated
in this manner for various physical and
social factors, for intelligence, habits, in-
terests and personality traits. The total
score will provide his "behavior rating."
This reviewer is appalled by the per-
sistent efforts and naive hopes of those
workers who profess to understand and
modify human behavior by itemizing and
scoring a loose medley of more or less
inaccurate data. Such efforts belong to
that era of intoxication among clinical
psychologists following the successful use
of intelligence tests, an era in which it
was thought more "scientific" to quanti-
tate and correlate than to understand.
An accident (and this applies to many
JULY 1937
of the sixty-six items of the scale) may
be mild in a physical sense, yet quite
severe in its emotional significance for
a given child. On the other hand, a
single accident may be more important in
its organic effect than the sixty-five re-
maining items.
More serious than the question of
"weighting" the items is the potential
harm the scale may inflict on the worker
taught to use it. Its danger lies in the
fact that it tends to give rise to the false
notion that the mere recording of an
event, in quantitative form, furnishes as
much knowledge of such an event as
the slow process of analyzing its mean-
ing as a living function in the process
of social adaptation.
New York DAVID M. LEVY, M.D.
The Mind's Strait Jacket
ALLI'S SON, A NOVEL, by Magnhild Haalke.
Knopf. 275 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
' I ''HIS is a well presented story of an
odd child with an intense imagina-
tion. His difficulties in adaptation gradu-
ally bring on a slow deterioration. Out
of fantasy, mental disorder finally is
born and queerness evolves as a psy-
chosis. The book is excellently written.
With power and sympathy the author
reveals the struggles of a sensitive mother
to hold on to her child so that he may '
escape the penalties of the tightening
strait jacket of his mind. This psycho-
logical exposition of familial struggle
with its sad humanities and harsh in-
humanities, will be deeply appreciated
by all engaged in psychiatric social work.
New York IRA S. WILE, M.D.
Extremely Simple
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY, by Harold H.
Anderson, Ph.D. Appleton-Century. 253 pp.
Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
PHIS is a pleasantly written, common
sense treatment of the simpler prob-
lems of child care and family relation-
ships, with emphasis on the infant and
younger child. "The chief contribution
of psychiatry to the mental health of the
child," says Dr. Anderson, "does not
lie ... in any form of psychological jiu
jitsu . . . but in a fundamental, pro-
found and sincere respect for the indi-
vidual." There is no doubt that this feel-
ing permeates the author's attitude.
Discipline is described as experience in
gradual growth toward responsible be-
havior. "Blind obedience to an external
authority does not contribute to growth.
... It stifles growth or it increases dis-
cord." Though demands for instantaneous
obedience may be justified in emergencies,
parents should realize that such obedience
"is only a temporary measure . . . and
does nothing to help the child or the
adult to find a harmony of purpose."
A section on sex education is excellent
for the concreteness of its help to parents
in answering the earliest questionings of
children; but too much is omitted. Con-
cerning the everyday problems of child-
hood sexuality, Dr. Anderson has little to
offer.
Much too has been omitted in the chap-
ter on emotional development. Dr. Ander-
son seems to see the child almost entirely
as a product of parental management.
If the child has fears, it is because some-
thing has frightened him or because he
is imitating adult fears. That he may have
fears or hatreds despite the best man-
agement is not mentioned nor is there
any recognition of the possibility that
many problems of children reside in the
very nature of childhood. Actually the
result of the author's extreme environ-
mentalist position which fixes guilt for
childhood problems wholly on the parents,
is no more wholesome for family life than
was our grandparents' tendency always to
blame the child.
It is an excellent thing to write a sim-
ple book about normal children, but
there is always the danger of oversimpli-
fication. Despite a winning manner, it
seems that Dr. Anderson has not escaped
this error. ANNA W. M. WOLF
Consultation Service
Child Study Association of America
Scrutinizing the Record
STUDIES IN GROUP BEHAVIOR, edited by
Grace L. Coyle. Harper. 258 pp. Price $2.75
postpaid of The Survey,
work is undergoing the pangs
^^ of emergence into a self-conscious
period of analyzing its objectives, func-
tions, and techniques. The social agencies
whose services consist in the provision
of facilities and leadership for group as-
sociation and activity are recognizing the
necessity for more adequate methods of
evaluating the meaning of their programs
in the light of social and individual needs.
The equipment and the skill of the work-
ers directing the program and services are
being scrutinized, as is the social process
involved in group relationships. The most
useful instrument for this scrutiny and
evaluation is, in group work as in case
work, the record kept by the social
worker of his observations of the group
experience.
This volume of summaries and inter-
pretations of the records of five groups,
edited by Grace L. Coyle, provides the
group work field with the first published
case material which can be used to an-
alyze group process and the group lead-
er's procedures. The groups were typical
clubs in a neighborhood center serving
to train students in the School of Ap-
plied Social Sciences of Western Reserve
University. The records were kept by
students in training under the supervision
of members of the staff of the group
work course in the period from 1930 to
1933.
Miss Coyle has summarized and edited
the records of the five groups so that the
239
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Young widow, trained in child-care, desires posi-
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changed. 7445 Survey.
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position in Institution. Long years experience.
Excellent references. 7446 Survey.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA FOR SALE
FOR SALE
Two beautiful sets of the AMERICANA ENCY-
CLOPAEDIA. One, (1927 revision) in solid
leather, gold embossed and edges, with 11 an-
nuals to and including 1937 — same binding and
finish. All like new. Cost $430.00 My price for
quick sale i» $65.00 cash.
The second set is in Fabrikoid binding, also
like new, with 10 annuals, including 1937.
Price $49.00 cash.
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112 West 86th Street New York City
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situations emerging in the group and the
methods used by the group leader in
meeting them are clearly revealed. This
has been accomplished by the introduc-
tion, throughout the chronological record,
of editorial notes interpreting the situa-
tions and raising questions regarding the
group leader's techniques. The usefulness
of the summarized records for discus-
sion and teaching purposes has been great-
ly enhanced by an introductory chapter,
The Group Leader and His Function.
Here the editor presents suggested cri-
teria for evaluating the worker's skill in
directing group activities and relation-
ships and in meeting the needs of indi-
vidual members.
It is unfortunate that the five group
records do not represent a somewhat
wider range of types of groups as to
setting, purpose, program and personnel.
It is hoped that there will be an in-
creasing volume of such case material, as
group work agencies become aware of
the value of documented experience in
developing more effective methods of aid-
ing groups in the fulfillment of individual
and social needs through cooperative ac-
tivity. CLARA A. KAISER
New Yort School of Social Work
For Occupational Seers
APTITUDES ANT) APTITUDE TESTING, by
Walter Van Dyke Bingham. Published for the
National Occupational Conference by Harper.
390 pn. Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
V\7RITTEN by an outstanding leader
* * in the field of personnel and guid-
ance, this book contains a vast amount
of authentic and up-to-date information
which is greatly needed by counselors.
It will be especially valuable to those
counselors who attempt to measure hu-
man abilities and aptitudes and who
interpret test data in terms of probable
occupational success.
The author discusses certain basic con-
cepts relative to the meaning of aptitude,
individual differences, ability, intelligence
and interest and then takes up the prob-
lem of measuring these potentialities for
guidance purposes. The aptitudes re-
quired for success in manual occupations,
skilled trades, clerical occupations, and
several of the professions are discussed
and studies and tests reported and ap-
praised.' Practical suggestions are given
for administering individual and group
tests and for interpreting test perform-
ance. Certain census data on occupational
trends and a brief discussion of occupa-
tional classification are included. An ap-
pendix contains descriptions, instructions
and norms for a number of tests and
interest inventories.
Dr. Bingham has made a commendable
contribution to many of the problems of
occupational adjustment and has pre-
sented his material in a style that stim-
ulates interest. WILLIAM H. STEAD
U. S. Employment Service
Washington, D. C.
In' answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
240
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EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
AUGUST 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 8
Frontispiece 242
The West Is Still Different JOANNA c. COLCORD 243
Be It Enacted FRED K. HOEHI.ER 246
Morals and Mothers HELEN B. LAUCHI.IN 248
Mopping Up the Floods DOUGLAS CREISEMER 250
When Outsiders Look In WALTER PETTIT AND A. L. NEW 251
A Sidelight on the N.Y.A SARAH ELIZABETH BUNDY 252
The Common Welfare 254
The Social Front 256
WPA • Compensation • Old Age Benefits • Public Welfare •
Labor Legislation • By and For Consumers • The Public's
Health • Against Crime • Professional • People and Things
The Pamphlet Shelf 266
Readers Write 267
Book Reviews 268
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• What bothers me most about thinking is
that it has to be done with words. — THOMAS
H. BENTON in Common Sense.
• Above all we need a reasoned plan for
curbing crime instead of the chaos that pro-
ceeds from ever-changing emotional swings. —
JUDGE JOSEPH N. ULMAN, Baltimore.
• The attitude "If you do this, I'll do that"
between employers and employes will never
make for good industrial relations. — JAMES
W. HOOK, president New England Council.
• You cannot have a peaceful world without
economic and military disarmament. Neither
can you have disarmament without a peaceful
world. — NORMAN H. DAVIS, accepting the
Woodrow Wilson medal.
• Liberalism will never be a useful force in
America until the children of light have made
up their minds that they must be at least
half as smart as the children of darkness. —
HEYWOOD BROUN in The Nation.
• In the new unionism there is no personal
feud of labor, there is no dictator, there is no
political program and there is no radicalism.
— MARY VAN KLEECK, New York, at Con-
ference on United States-Canadian Affairs.
• Governments all over the world today ad-
dress each other in terms of what will appeal
to the public rather than what will appeal to
the officials of the governments addressed. —
DR. FLOYD S. WINSLOW, president, Medical
Society of the State of New York.
So They Say
• It is the responsibility of the police to
teach people how to get along together, a
lesson badly needed everywhere. — SIDNEY J.
WILLIAMS, National Safety Council.
• America's primary difficulty is that it has
too many people who are politically unem-
ployed and spiritually on relief. — THE RT.
REV. IRVING PEAKE JOHNSON, bishop of
Colorado.
• The days of private breadlines and soup
kitchens are gone and gone forever. And
we are faced with a serious problem for the
next ten years. — FIORELLO H. LA GUARDIA,
mayor of New York City.
• We are not going to be able to liquidate
the relief problem in the United States in any
other manner than by giving jobs to the un-
employed.— EDMOND BORGIA BUTLER, secre-
tary, New York Emergency Relief Bureau.
The Survey's "Miss Bailey" is on vaca-
tion and her usual article in the series Miss
Bailey Says ... is missing this month.
Early this fall she will resume her obser-
vations on the social security services as
she sees them at work "at the grassroots."
• Whatever democratic government may or
may not be, it is deliberate government. —
DOROTHY THOMPSON, news commentator.
• If I can't read a book without having the
author intrude upon my consciousness, it is no
book but a literary cock's crow. — ALVIN
JOHNSON, New School of Social Research.
• I am glad to hear of the constitutionality
of the social security act because if it's all
right to have a poor system it's all right to
have a good one. — DR. FRANCIS E.
TOWNSEND.
• The political consequences of popular edu-
cation develop slowly, the time unit being a
generation, but they come on with the unlim-
ited measure and irresistible force of a great
flood. — Prof. DEWITT CLINTON POOLE, Prince-
ton University, in Public Opinion.
• We parents have molded, planned and
dreamed an environment for our children
until the great danger is that they will be-
come, not themselves, but merely the sum of
all our yesterdays. — EMMA GELDERS STERNE,
Pelham, N. Y., before American Library
Association.
• The fallacy of social ethics lies, I think, in
the assumption that all human life is in-
herently good and worthy of preservation,
and that by a process of environmental tink-
ering fools may be transmuted into sages,
criminals into saints and politicians into
statesmen. — EARNEST A. HOOTON, professor of
anthropology, Harvard University.
MORE OUTINGS IN CITY PARKS
o o o c
1933
1934
1935
1936
o o o o o oooooooooooooooooo
Each symbol equals 10,000 children
OLD AGE ASSISTANCE
Each symbol represent 2500 clients
Each circle represents $500,000
CHILDREN PROPOSED FOR CITY CARE
1929
1931
1933
1935
1936
ACCEPTED NOT ACCEPTED
GO O
oooooooooooo oooo
Ifffflfflftlflfl
o ooooooooc
o o oo o o o o o o
MfifiiM?
Each symbol equals 1000 children
How New York City is "advancing toward social security"
is told in the annual report of the Department of Public
Welfare for 1936. Many pictographs, illuminating easy-to-
read text and easy-to-understand statistics, portray de-
velopments of the year in activities requiring a budget
of $11,328,132, of which nearly $10 million was for cash
relief to veterans, the blind and the aged. "The trend of
government," says Commissioner William Hodson in a
foreword," is toward social justice rather than 'charity.' "
THE SURVEY
AUGUST 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 8
The West Is Still Different
By JOANNA C. COLCORD
Charity Organization Department, Russell Sage Foundation
THOSE who get about in the American social work
scene smile gently when local people say: "Of course
our problems are unique ; no other city, or no other
state, is in just the situation we face here." The joke, how-
ever, is that the statement is true. In an early summer swing-
around-the-circle touching eight states of the southwest and
far west, that which stands out in the whole relief picture
is the extreme diversity of situations and organizations.
This in spite of the fact that permanent state relief admin-
istrations presumably are working now under more uniform
national legislation and supervision than ever before.
Even in the centralized federal WPA program wide dif-
ferences are found in procedure between regional areas, if
not so wide between individual states within the same
region. Variation between states as to the numbers of peo-
ple "certified and awaiting assignment" loses its significance
when it is discovered that in one of these states such cer-
tifications are flagged and automatically cancelled at the
end of thirty days if no assignment to work has taken place;
while in a neighboring state, the certifications remain active
for ninety days, and are then cancelled only after confer-
ence with the certifying agency about the candidate's cur-
rent situation. The number of workers unassigned to WPA
ceases to be a measure of the need for such employment,
when it is realized that in one state a family with as little
as $10 a month of earned income will be adjudged "not in
need of relief," since the state's relief average is below that
figure, while its next neighbor will certify a family for
WPA employment if it has an income of double that
amount.
In several states, even when quota reductions were in
progress, the employment division of WPA exhibited great
reluctance to "separate" persons eligible for assistance under
the state's social security program, unless those persons were
desirous of making application for the more permanent form
of public aid. There seemed to be no explanation for the
illogical procedure of retaining on the temporary work pro-
gram so called "unemployables" for whom the states had
made permanent provision, and at the same time laying off
"employables" for whom the care available through general
relief was much less adequate.
Perhaps the strongest impression that lingers from a field
trip to state relief agencies at the present time is the cum-
bersomeness, wastefulness and essential injustice of eligi-
bility requirements involved in our categorical system of
relief. An entire day was spent with the field staff of one
state that just was entering upon its program of old age
assistance. A group of busy, devoted people labored from
morning till night to determine what facts could be taken
as proof of age, residence, citizenship and so on. When the
actual document — birth certificate, naturalization paper or
whatever — is not to be found, how many other kinds of
evidence must be assembled and testified to, in order to
establish eligibility? How can we certify for the old age
program a man born in Holland who was brought to Amer-
ica at the age of four? He thinks his father was naturalized
later in Chicago but there is no record. Can we accept the
baptismal certificate of a Mexican woman which states
that she was born in a town on the American side of the
border? Must we examine tax-lists of every county in the
state to determine if the applicant owns property in excess
of the legal limit, or will the county of residence suffice ?
THE air was thick, with the burden of what "we" — tfie
social workers — had to swear to, if clients were not to
be denied what they claimed and needed. How heavenly
simple it would be for the administrators, how much more
just to the applicants, if all that had to be determined in the
case of any client were his family needs and his family re-
sources! The volume of time consumed in paper-work to
secure judicial proof of what are, after all, irrelevant de-
tails, is shocking and disheartening, especially when time,
services and money are all three so inadequate to the volume
of need that cries out to be met.
A surprising discovery was the extent to which, in the
southwestern area, state centralization has replaced local
initiative in the relief picture. In Arkansas, Arizona and
New Mexico, all operating under newly-passed legislation,
243
the state departments of public welfare administer directly,
in all counties, the social assistances under the social security
act as well as general relief. Only federal-state funds are
used; county personnel is state-appointed, state-supervised
and state-paid. In New Mexico, local county commissioners
have not even an advisory relationship to the local program,
and no general advisory committees of laymen exist in the
counties. This was, of course, the plan pursued in the state
of Washington following the dissolution of the state ERA,
but under this spring's legislation creating a state Depart-
ment of Social Security, a degree of local autonomy has
been reintroduced.
In Oklahoma, the state set-up for relief can be character-
ized by no other term than fantastic in its complexity. State
institutions are supervised, as in the past, by an elected com-
missioner of charities and corrections, the only elected com-
missioner in the country. To take advantage of the social
security act, the state had to amend its constitution, and did
so at the last election, setting up a Public Welfare Commis-
sion appointed by the governor with full power to admin-
ister federal-state funds for the purposes of the act. The
commission also has power to administer state funds for
general relief; but the legislature, finding that the consti-
tutional amendment that it had passed gave the commission
complete power over local personnel, decided to create a
second state body called the Board of Public Welfare and
to entrust it with the administration of state monies appro-
priated for general relief. It further provided that such
funds could not be used to supplement WPA wages or as-
sistance grants from the commission.
There thus exists in every county of Oklahoma a board
office and a commission office, manned by state personnel,
one political and one non-political, and each proceeding on
entirely different policies, although the county commissioners
act as advisory committees to both. The confusion created
in the public mind can best be illustrated by the statement
made to me that, in many of these counties, local postmasters
have given up the attempt to sort into separate piles the
mail addressed to the two relief offices, and simply hand
over the whole bunch to the first person who calls for it
from either outfit. Meanwhile, the commissioners of some
Oklahoma counties continue to handle county relief funds,
very small in amount except in Tulsa and Oklahoma City,
and chiefly used for burials and special cases.
TEXAS is in quite another category. The State Relief
Commission, I was told, has no funds for general re-
lief, and confines itself to certifying for the work programs
and the distribution of surplus commodities. Among the so-
cial assistances, only old age assistance is in effect. Any other
relief must be from local sources. But the city of El Paso,
the only Texas community visited, has no department of
public welfare and appropriates only $3000 a year for re-
lief, which it turns over for expenditure to the private
family agency.
In all this southwest tier, emphasis is upon the social .
security assistances. In most of the states, general relief gets
whatever is left over — if anything is left. In Arkansas and
Oklahoma, general relief averages well below $10 per fam-
ily per month. Curiously enough, both these states provide
a centrally administered "hospitalization fund" which can
be used when members of dependent families become seri-
ously ill, although funds to keep them well are not available.
In New Mexico, according to WPA officials, no general
relief is available for employables — if they do not get WPA
jobs they must fend for themselves. Arizona, which pre-
viously had no enforceable settlement act, passed a three-
year residence law in March, but this law, unlike most
others, nowhere specifies that time "on relief" must be
deducted in arriving at the period when legal settlement
is established.
When one reaches the Coast, the picture is different. In
the three coast states, county participation in administra-
tion or finance, or both, is strictly required. Oregon de-
mands of its counties that they budget quarterly in advance
their total needs for all descriptions of assistances and relief,
and deposit in cash — no county warrants accepted — the
total amount of the county's contribution under each cate-
gory. The state thus has physical possession of each relief
dollar to be spent before reimbursement begins. "What
happens when one of your counties goes broke?" the state
relief director was asked. "We have no broke counties in
Oregon," was his reply.
/^ERTAINLY Oregon is no more prosperous as a com-
^^ munity than Texas or Oklahoma, but the fact that its
law enables the State Relief Committee to demand and en-
force financial participation from counties means that in that
state, as elsewhere along the Coast, the average grants for
general relief greatly exceed those in the southwest tier.
Old age assistance programs, in effect in all the states
visited, are powerfully wrought upon by the pioneer philoso-
phy of the West. Effort is being made to keep grants on a
basis of budgetary deficiency, but applicants and the com-
munity alike press for flat "pensions," the same amount for
everyone. To have survived to the age of sixty-five in these
far west communities means that the applicant presumably
has participated in the upbuilding of the region from its
early days. Far from regretting the necessity of accepting
public assistance, the applicant and his friends, if he is de-
nied this accolade of pioneership, demand belligerently to
know what's wrong with his record. It must be said, how-
ever, that the term "pi«neers" is reserved for the dominant
race. There was a great to-do in the Arizona papers when
the first OAA grant was made to a Mexican.
Interesting testimony was advanced all along the way, by
relief and WPA administrators alike, that the combined
work and relief programs in this region have contributed
effectively to raise agricultural wages. New Mexican sheep-
herders who a few years back worked for $20 a month now
can command $40. Less spectacular percentage increases
were reported in other states, for which the relief authori-
ties claimed some part, at least, of the credit.
In California, a high-light of interest is the medical pro-
gram, which continues as probably the most complete and
effective of that of any state relief set-up. [See General
Cargo from California, The Survey, September 1935, page
267.] California now has, in rudimentary form, both halves
of a health insurance program ; it provides free medical care
for the unemployed, and replaces, by a comparatively gen-
erous relief program, part at least of wages lost through
illness. In addition, every person assigned to work on WPA
has a preliminary medical examination. "In California,"
a WPA official proudly stated, "we don't have tuberculars
hemorrhaging on the job, cardiacs fainting, hernias strangu-
lating."
Another California high-light centers on recent social
legislation in that state. Two years back it was felt that a
great gain had been accomplished when the State Relief
Commission, by constitutional amendment, was made part
244-
THE SURVEY
of the permanent state government, separate from the State
Department of Public Welfare. At the current session of
the legislature, a bill was introduced to create a new and
modern Department of Public Welfare to administer the
social assistances. Though the bill was doggedly championed
by the social workers of the state and the League of Women
Voters, it was an unexpected victory when the legislature
passed it and the governor signed it, at the same time refus-
ing to sign a bill sponsored by the county commissioners
which would have limited the new board's powers by ex-
tending local autonomy.
So California, all unawares, was set up like Oklahoma,
with two complete state bodies to administer relief and the
assistances. The difference was that everybody, including
the legislature, wanted to have the program unified. A bill
was rushed through and signed by the governor, amalga-
mating the old State Relief Commission with the new state
board. Then up spoke the attorney general and pointed out
that you cannot amend a state constitution by action of a
single legislative session. It takes more than this to stop
California, however, and as I left the state, it was reported
that unofficial assurances had been obtained from Governor
Merriam that he would dissolve the SRC, as the constitu-
tion gives him power to do, and in appointing the new
Board of Public Welfare, would name the samr persons
for the same terms as members of the SRC. Operation
would then be merely a matter of book-keeping.
Washington high-lights were numerous. To begin with,
the new act creating the Department of Social Security has
the extraordinary feature of bringing in the public employ-
ment services and unemployment compensation as separate
divisions of the department that administers general relief
and the social security assistances. The plan has, if not the
backing, at least the toleration of organized labor, much
preoccupied just at this time with bigger things in the
Northwest.
Two interesting developments here are, first, a division
of community organization under the Department of Social
Security, working through county advisory committees
whose mandate is to study their own communities and dis-
cover and report to the department the factors within them
which contribute to unemployment and dependency; and,
second, the promotion of volunteer service, in the form of
friendly visiting to persons receiving old age assistance.
Volunteers are recruited through churches and service clubs,
and are expected to turn in reports and confer regularly
with the visitor officially responsible for administering the
service.
IN Washington there is still good farm-land to be
stumped and preempted and drought emigres with agri-
cultural experience are readily absorbed. It has been neces-
sary to use only a small fraction of a special fund created
for their reestablishment by the Resettlement Administra-
tion. The community has no fear of outsiders coming in ; it
is desirous of increasing its population. Consequently no
opposition was raised to the new state law to wipe out all
former residence laws governing receipt of relief. To a
greater extent than one would deem possible, transients and
residents fare alike at the hands of the relief authorities.
Washington's angle on the "border patrol" is interesting in
this connection. The state highway police is currently in-
formed of land being cleared for settlement and the demand
for labor throughout the state and when they stop incoming
cars, as they may at their discretion, it is not for the pur-
pose of turning back work-seekers and home-seekers, but of
saving them an aimless search by suggestions of where to
look for what they desire.
Although the young state has no general civil service sys-
tem, the Department of Social Security has hastened to
equip itself with its own merit system. The personnel man-
ual contains specifications for every job down to janitor;
written tests have been conducted by examiners from the
faculties of the State University and the State Agricultural
College, and interviews and oral examinations are in
process. There was no "blanketing in" of employes — every-
one had to take the examinations. The eligible list, when
available, is to govern all appointments, both to the state
and county staffs.
' I AHERE is, in some western and mid-western states, a con-
J- siderable awakening of interest in the state-stimulated,
state-supervised and state-subsidized self-help cooperative as
a way out of dependence on relief, particularly for the man
of fifty and over. In Washington, the possibilities of acquir-
ing land suitable for the development of small homesteads
are being investigated by the Department of Social Security.
Families to be colonized on these little farms will be ex-
pected to join a going cooperative, and part of the relief
which the family otherwise would require will go into
strengthening the cooperative enterprise.
Cooperation is being developed even among "unemploy-
ables." A group of single old men receiving old age assist-
ance— former lumbermen, fishermen, miners and the like,
accustomed to bunk-house living — have been assisted to rent
and recondition the boarding-house in an abandoned mill-
town. Use of a forge and carpenter-shop on the mill prop-
erty has been granted, and as all the men are "handy" they
can manage their own repairs and build articles of furni-
ture to add to the boarding house's small equipment. Land
is available for kitchen-garden, poultry-yard, and pigpen.
The men have formed a cooperative, elected a business man-
ager, and turn into a common fund their monthly assistance
grants, from which supplies are purchased, and the cook
paid. Water and electric light are on the premises — the
lights go off sometimes, and the plumbing is queer, but if
their combined skills won't accomplish the necessary repairs,
they do as any moneyed group of citizens would do, and hire
a plumber and electrician.
The OAA Division looks in on the old men once or
twice a week, but has no resident supervisor. It is angling
for an invitation to audit the accounts ; but meanwhile the
group has "kicked out" one business manager and elected
another. From being depressed and idle individuals, they
have become a bustling and purposeful group, with more
ideas to carry out than their aged bodies can keep up with.
They have put through a dicker with the mill so that the
rent paid by the cooperative can apply to ultimate purchase
of the building; they have welcomed into membership some
old men with small personal incomes who are not on relief ;
and they have in mind a plan of reconditioning and renting
to old couples some of the separate small houses on the prop-
erty. So much has the neighboring village been impressed by
their spirit that the Ladies' Sewing Guild came over in a
body and made their curtains for them. Possibly a button-
sewing project will be the next neighborly gesture.
Yes, the West is different, as I remarked in these columns
on a former occasion. [See Survey Graphic, June 1932,
page 217.] But, as I then said and now repeat, variation in
pattern is the rule, not the exception, in the American scene.
AUGUST 1937
Be It Enacted...
Grabwise goes progress in state public welfare legislation
By FRED K. HOEHLER
Director, American Public Welfare Association
THE regular sessions of state legislatures are now over
for the year. Much welfare legislation has been con-
sidered and written. It is possible therefore — though
not easy — to identify trends that showed themselves and to
estimate the somewhat crabwise progress made the past year
toward a rounded and integrated public welfare program.
More specifically it now is possible to appraise in terms of
legislation the results of planned effort in many states to
achieve such a program.
During the past two years, numbers of business and pro-
fessional men the country over have given their time and
their best efforts to reviewing the welfare needs of their
states and to framing recommendations to their governors
or legislatures for new or revamped organization in line
with modern thought and with the requirements of federal
legislation in the same field. In the May issue of The Sur-
vey Martha A. Chickering reviewed the reports of a num-
ber of these state commissions. She found essential similarity
in the problems they dealt with ; wide variation in the form
of organization they proposed, but a consistent and "impres-
sive" unanimity of philosophy, particularly in relation to
acceptance of responsibility and in the "departure from the
deterrent spirit of the old poor laws."
It is clear that intelligent men and women in all states
knew that the need for a method of providing public as-
sistance to a large group and social security for the entire
people was no mere New Deal battle cry. Informed people
everywhere were faced with the stark reality of millions of
unemployed without an opportunity to work even on a
federal work relief program, and millions more totally un-
employable. These facts were acknowledged by industrial
and labor leaders alike. What could be done most effectively
and efficiently was the question which thoughtful citizens
expected special commissions, and finally state legislators
to answer.
The actual accomplishments of several of the state legisla-
tures were so unproductive of sound laws as to suggest an
expression of commiseration to the able and competent com-
missions whose time, so far as action on their recommenda-
tions went, seems to have been wasted. The poorer features
of the new laws were not due to unsound advice from the
commissions. Usually they were directly due to politically-
minded governors and legislators who insisted on retaining
outmoded, separate bureaus for administration and spoils-
men personnel procedures, all because "the faithful" must
keep their jobs in existing bureaus or be taken care of in
new programs unprotected by a merit system.
A typical example of what has happened to some of the
excellent commission reports is presented by Ohio. As early
as 1935, Gov. Martin L. Davey asked Col. C. O. Sherrill
of Cincinnati and a state-wide group of business and pro-
fessional men to survey the state government. This body
known as the Sherrill Committee, was instructed to report
to the governor on the entire administrative machinery of
the state and to present recommendations on reorganization
to the end of reducing the cost of government without cur-
tailing essential services.
The committee, supported by personnel and funds pro-
vided by industrial and community groups, took its work
seriously. Its final report went to the governor on Novem-
ber 20, 1935, and to date, and most particularly in the
social welfare field, not one recommendation has been ac-
cepted wholeheartedly. The conclusive evidence of waste
and inefficiency amassed by the committee and the need for
reorganization or new legislation in the welfare field have
been ignored by state officials.
What happened in Ohio? Let us look at the record —
not a very detailed look but what it reveals is true of every
recommendation relating to social welfare.
THE Sherrill report recommended reorganization of
the State Welfare Department and appointment by the
governor of an unpaid advisory board of seven members for
overlapping terms. No reorganization bill was presented to
the legislature by the governor, and no advisory board was
asked for or appointed by him.
The committee pointed out, among a number of other
things, that:
1. "Ohio might save over $4 million a year by better
administration of aid for the aged." To further this econ-
omy, it recommended legislation for reorganization to in-
clude aid for the aged as a section of the public assistance
division of the State Welfare Department ; administration
of aid for the aged by county welfare departments with
other forms of relief and public assistance, and with local
financial participation ; civil service appointment of the chief
of the section on aid for the aged.
2. "The personnel of aid for aged staff, both state and
local, have been in general persons of low educational
standards." It recommended raising these standards.
3. "The head of the state aid for aged has usurped au-
thority of local boards." It recommended that administra-
tion be on a local basis through locally appointed boards.
To these three points the governor and the legislature
answered with :
1. A new law, passed in April 1937, making aid for the
aged a separate division and not a part of the division of
public assistance ; creating a state administered agency with
no local administration or local participation; making the
chief of the division an appointee of the director of welfare,
subject to the approval of the governor.
2. A law approved by the governor on May 4, 1937,
providing, that "No rules or regulations shall be made
setting up educational requirements as a condition of taking
a civil service examination . . . except such requirements
as are expressly imposed by statute and to the extent of the
requirements so imposed." (House Bill 234). And again
(Section 9, House Bill 699) ".'. . there shall be no dis-
crimination by reason of the prospective appointees having
been connected with any relief agency ... or by reason of
246
THE SURVEY
their having or having not attended any college. . . . Ap-
pointees should be of good moral character. . . ."
3. Local committees of experienced men and women were
dismissed by the chief of the aid for aged division, and the
service was operated directly from the state office with no
local committees.
Other recent legislation provides that, "The chief of the
division [state] with the approval of the director [state
welfare] shall appoint advisory boards in each subdivision
consisting of five citizens of such county. The chief shall
prescribe qualifications for members . . . and shall prescribe
duties. . . ."
OHIO has been discussed at this length because it is one
of a very few states in which the study of welfare
needs by a citizen group was begun more than two years
ago. The results have been negligible. New York, one of
this same group, is at the other extreme. Here the Wardwell
Commission, appointed by Governor Lehman, recommended
the integration of the Temporary Emergency Relief Ad-
ministration with the permanent welfare department with
improvements in organization and procedures in line with
new conditions. The legislature responded favorably and
the results are sound legislation and good organization as
the cornerstone of efficient service.
Commission recommendations in various states have been
ignored consistently in respect to persistent evils. The old
pressure for local talent as against "carpet-baggers," for
example, found expression in several laws enacted during
the current year. Residence requirements for personnel vary-
ing from one to ten years were written into the laws of
Arizona, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri,. Ohio,
Illinois, Florida and Indiana.
The Missouri Commission on Social Security, appointed
by Governor Park early in 1936, recommended that the
executive officer of the proposed department of welfare
should be chosen solely on the basis of qualifications for his
duties. The resultant law reads, "The state administrator
shall be qualified by education and experience and shall
have been a citizen and a tax payer of the state for ten
years."
The Department of Public Welfare, as envisioned by the
commission, would have included all forms of public assist-
ance and institutional control, with services under the super-
vision of a board and an executive officer. It recommended:
an integrated relief and public assistance service; unified
county boards of public welfare; county staff appointed on
the basis of qualification in training and experience.
The law passed June 23, 1937, provides for a State
Social Security Commission responsible for old age assist-
ance, aid to dependent children, disaster relief and child
welfare services, but leaves blind pensions and the board of
control for institutions as separate state agencies.
Actually, the state of Missouri has no integrated service,
and each county has a social security commission with func-
tions restricted to the services found in the state commission.
There is a residence requirement for the staff administering
county services, and the county executive must have been a
resident of the state for five years. Missouri has denied to
its citizens any experience which might have been brought
in from a state or locality well along in the development
of public welfare services.
Then there is Wisconsin. In 1936 the governor appointed
the Citizens Committee on Public Welfare which, early in
1937, made an exhaustive report with recommendations for
state programs of social security, mental hygiene, correc-
tions, public health, and education. County boards of social
security were proposed for local administration of social
welfare services. The need for adequate standards of per-
sonnel and service was emphasized.
The Wisconsin legislature met and adjourned with no
action whatsoever on the recommendations of the Commit-
tee. For the time being at least the old order of things con-
tinues in "progressive" Wisconsin.
In spite of the effort of state commissions to improve the
standard of relief and the methods of granting assistance,
several states have written into their legislation such pro-
visions as this: "It shall be the duty of the administration
to report monthly to the county commissioners . . . the
names and addresses of all persons [children in one case]
receiving care or assistance with the amount and character
of such aid or assistance."
As against the discouraging examples of Ohio, Missouri,
and Wisconsin, there is, here and there, evidence of signifi-
cant improvements resulting from commission reports. A
layman in Michigan writes, "With what is far from the
best legislature Michigan has ever had, it has come through
with one of the most sweeping welfare reorganizations that
ever has been enacted in any state in the Union."
A study of the report of the Emergency Welfare Relief
Commission of Michigan and of the laws which followed it
sustains at least the latter part of the statement of this
observer. A single state agency, a Department of Public
Assistance, replaces six agencies which formerly existed in
the welfare field. A commission of five chooses the director
of the state department and the deputy director. Many
duplicating local agencies are abolished and county depart-
ments of public assistance are created. Employes of state
and county services qualify and are appointed under a merit
system and have civil service status. The provisions of the
senate bills reorganizing the public welfare services of the
state are almost identical with the recommendations of the
Governor's Commission.
THE Pennsylvania Committee on Public Assistance and
Relief, headed by Herbert T. Goodrich of the law
school of the University of Pennsylvania, reported to Gov-
ernor Earle in December 1936. The legislation embodying
the substance of its recommendations was enacted after a
long bitter fight in the closing hours of the legislative ses-
sion. It is now reported that the law which abolished the
old county poor board system will be challenged in the
courts. The unified program of public assistance and relief
proposed by the Goodrich Committee and accepted by the
legislature has already been outlined in The Survey. [See
January 1937, page 10 and July 1937, page 228.] How-
ever it might be noted, as an indication of the temper of
lawmakers, that while the committee recommended that all
officers and employes of the State Department of Public
Assistance, other than those in policy determining positions,
and all officers and employes of all county boards of assist-
ance be placed under the merit system, the legislature and
the governor took exception to what the committee intended
as a merit provision. The law as enacted reads: ". . . exami-
nation shall be practical in character . . . which will test the
relative capacity and fitness of persons ... to be appointed,
but no applicant shall be required to be possessed of any
scholastic education or training in order to be permitted to
take any examination or to be appointed to any position."
In spite of such indications there is a hopeful side to the
AUGUST 1937
247
personnel picture in most of the laws passed during 1937.
A combination of "training," "experience," and "ability"
in public welfare administration are the terms used in the
laws of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, New
Mexico, and Wyoming to describe the qualifications for the
director. Two states, Montana and Texas, add education
as a qualification. A few states have in-service training pro-
visions in their laws. The state of Washington has pioneered
by actually providing scholarships for those who show abil-
ity to grow under further educational advantages.
Forty-eight states, Alaska, the District of Columbia, and
Hawaii are concerned with welfare legislation. During the
past two years, about a fourth of them appointed commis-
sions or committees of one kind or another to recommend
such legislation. This in itself is a hopeful indication of
recognition of the need for study and planning in this area
of public affairs. Each of the forty-eight states and the other
units passed some sort of welfare measure. The examples
that I have cited of commission efforts and resultant legis-
lation— some good, some bad — are typical of what happened
the country over.
During the first six months of 1937 twenty-two states
enacted laws which reorganized old welfare services or cre-
ated new welfare departments. In most of them consolida-
tion in the interest of efficiency and economy was a factor;
in almost all, advisory boards were set up to further the
democratic process in government service; in a majority
some degree of competency of personnel, by selection on a
merit basis was assured. In all the new laws there is men-
tion, in one way or another, of the need for prevention and
rehabilitation, and the recognition that any sound relief or
public assistance program must contain provisions to aid in
the reduction of the tragic effects of old age, sickness, and
unemployment.
In spite of the spottiness of welfare legislation this past
season there is, I believe, no reason for discouragement. No
one aware of the realities of practical politics believed that
we would in a single year bridge the gap between confusion
and order in what Alvin Johnson pessimistically describes
as "the most chaotic and disordered division of human
affairs." As a matter of fact we have made definite progress,
most encouraging in that the states have made a start toward
meeting their larger obligations and responsibilities. As
the importance of the public welfare functions of govern-
ment is realized by the people who must pay the bill, there
will be improvements in the laws, in the quality of person-
nel and in the efficiency of services. For, in the final analysis
it is the people who pay the bill who have the last word.
Morals and Mothers
By HELEN B. LAUGHLIN
*
Mothers Assistance Fund, Philadelphia, Pa.
HOW "proper" must a mother be to be proper
enough to receive public assistance for her children ?
Thirty-seven of the forty-six states, along with the
District of Columbia, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Hawaii, that
have endorsed the principle of mothers' aid have written
some form of moral character requirement into their laws.
Some put it one way, some another : a mother must be
"proper and fit," "fit morally," "proper guardian," "suitable
person morally," "of good moral character," "competent
morally," "capable morally," "possessed of sufficient moral
fitness," "of proved character and ability," and so on. The
laws show a variety of wording but a constant reiteration
of the basic idea "proper and fit morally."
What does it mean to be proper ? Webster defines proper
as "particular, peculiar, suitable in all respects, appropriate,
right, fit, decent, well-formed and handsome," which, if
taken literally, would be a pretty severe test of eligibility
for assistance. Fortunately, in some states the very looseness
of the wording of the character clause, subject to interpreta-
tion by every wind that blows, has been a virtue in disguise
making for flexibility in practice, but in more conservative
states definitions have been frozen in and flexibility has been
frozen out.
Eligibility for assistance for minor children under the law
of Pennsylvania has certain limitations so well defined that
there is no question of their meaning. But as the years have
passed, the point that a mother must be "of proved charac-
ter and ability" has had many interpretations.
Undoubtedly this "character" clause was written into the
law with a very literal intention, since at the time of its
writing the care of fatherless children in their own homes
instead of in institutions was a very radical departure from
precedent. It was necessary continually to prove that chil-
dren brought up under the care of their own mothers had
a better chance to develop into good citizens than those
cared for in institutions. At that time too the whole ap-
proach to dependency was inclined to be judgmental and
inflexible, with little tendency to accept people as they are,
with all their individual limitations and differences. The
method was to tell clients what they should be and how
they should be it.
Later mothers' aid laws took their pattern of properness
more or less from the early "radical" measures. But as time
has gone on and new currents have altered case work think-
ing, flexibility of interpretation of "proved character and
ability" has greatly modified actual practice under the laws.
However the extent of modification still depends largely
on the degree of tolerance and freedom from prejudice
possessed by the individual interpreter.
In the early stages of mothers' aid in Pennsylvania inter-
pretation of the character clause was so literal as to limit
intake to what might be called "standard" mothers. A
mother with an illegitimate child, or an addiction to alcohol,
or who had a "man lodger" in the home usually was re-
fused benefits. Should any of these derelictions become ap-
parent after a mother had been accepted for benefits she
was firmly removed from the rolls.
The trouble with this virtuous practice was that it re-
sulted in penalizing the children without reforming the
errant mother. We found that when we rejected or dis-
248
THE SURVEY
continued an allowance with the recommendation that the
children be taken out of the home, our advice was not being
followed. Judges were most reluctant to sign orders to
break up a home unless conditions in it were clearly intol-
erable; private child placing agencies frequently were unable
to persuade the mother to accept their program. Therefore
the family, mother and children, went on as a unit, getting
relief where they could find it but lacking entirely the
supervision which it is the responsibility of the Mothers
Assistance Fund to give to widows and children. All that
our virtuous withdrawal accomplished was to leave children
unprotected in a home situation where their interests should
have been the first consideration.
LTTLE by little, as experience with border line cases ac-
cumulated, interpretation of "proved character and
ability" became more flexible. In practice we began to get
away from moralistic judgments and to realize that what
is best for the child is the only safe measure in appraising
the "character" of the mother.
Take for example the whole crop of problems raised by
the fact of an illegitimate child in a home with legitimate
children. Under the interpretation of the Pennsylvania law
a mother may not receive assistance for an illegitimate child
born after her husband's death, but may, while illegitimately
pregnant, receive aid for her legitimate children. Query: is
an illegitimately pregnant mother of "proved character and
ability?" The interpretation implies that she is, but that she
ceases to be for her illegitimate child as soon as it is born.
Such situations as that spread confusion in our thinking
until we realized that the question to answer was, "What is
best for the children?" To focus on the one factor of the
mother's illegitimate pregnancy was not enough ; a sound
decision in the best interests of the children could be
reached only by weighing and balancing all the elements
in the family situation.
I remember well the puzzling case of Mrs. Smith — which
wasn't her name — and her three little girls. Mr. Smith had
been a steady worker and a home loving man, and the first
two years after he died were pretty hard on the widow.
Just the same she adjusted to her changed economic situ-
ation and showed herself a mother of "proved character and
ability." Then she became pregnant. She told a story that
showed great emotional disturbance and intense loneliness.
She had met the man in the case at a neighborhood party.
He lived in another state. After a good deal of discussion
a tolerant interpretation of the character clause was reached
and Mrs. Smith was kept on the assistance rolls. The new
baby became an important member of the family, accepted
and loved by the other children. The satisfactions that this
mother's affection gave her children, and their wholesome
development, far outweighed the moral issue.
In Philadelphia County, there were, at a recent date,
thirty-nine mother's aid families, out of a total case load of
1752, where the first child was illegitimate and twelve
where an illegitimate child had been born since the hus-
band's death or commitment.
There is actually nothing in the Pennsylvania law to ex-
clude an alcoholic from mothers' aid benefits. But the ques-
tion of whether a mother addicted to drink is or is not a
proper mother will not down. Here again by weighing all
of the factors in the home life and keeping a firm eye on the
whole welfare of the children we have reached flexibility of
definition of properness. There was, for example, Mrs. Jones
— that will do for a name — who shared her departed hus-
band's reputation for drinking. She had two little boys to
whom she was devoted, though she overindulged them and
had no great capacity for home making. However after care-
ful investigation and consideration she was accepted for an
allowance. For two years it was uphill work. But slowly,
under the security of a steady income and the aid and en-
couragement of the case worker, Mrs. Jones became more
self-sufficient, finding satisfaction in her little boys and in
her home. The children improved physically and in their
school work and the atmosphere of the home became con-
ducive to their growth. Mrs. Jones is still no paragon but
the boys are thriving and that, we hold, is the basic test.
We have ten Mrs. Joneses on our Philadelphia County
Mothers' Aid rolls and in no case have we any doubt of the
wisdom of continuing the aid.
The man lodger is another problem to which mothers'
aid everywhere is heir. There is nothing in the Pennsylvania
law that prohibits the man lodger but a ruling by the At-
torney General's office has made him unacceptable. The
result has been considerable confusion of interpretation of
the legal properness of a mother with a lodger in her home.
Here our aim is to protect those mothers and children whom
the ruling was intended to protect and at the same time to
give careful consideration to certain exceptional cases.
There was, I remember, Mrs. Robinson, or some such
name, and her seven children, living in a large comfortable
house which they were buying — that being cheaper than
renting. They were a united lot, each of them doing his
part to keep the family going. But there wasn't quite money
enough, and to eke out Mrs. Robinson rented a room to a
widower, a life long friend of the family. He had a good
job and a car, was fond of the children and they of him.
He was a real asset to the family and was so accepted by the
community. Certainly Mrs. Robinson has no less "proved
character and ability" because she took this means of help-
ing to keep her home and family intact.
In Philadelphia County we have twenty-nine Mrs. Rob-
insons receiving mothers' aid. Each case demonstrates that
different situations should be treated differently.
I WOULD not have it thought that because I argue for
flexibility of interpretation of existing laws I am one of
those social workers who think of the law as an obstacle to
"our" kind of approach, as a stereotyped set of unrelated
rules rather than as a system of justice. On the contrary,
laws are but the outgrowth of the accumulation of human
experience. They change and grow as human experience
changes and grows. It is only when social workers supinely
accept "as is" the laws under which they work, and become
as inflexible in practice as the laws are in terminology, that
a law becomes "frozen in."
Many years and much experience have gone over the
dam since the first mothers' aid laws were written and the
"proper" pattern was set for mothers needing assistance to
keep their children with them. Although many of the laws
have been amended in various ways the character clause still
sticks in one form or another, a deterrent, at least to the lit-
eral minded, to that flexibility of treatment that simple com-
mon sense dictates. Now with the coming, under the Social
Security Act, of a broad federally aided program of assist-
ance to children, it is more than ever important that the
state laws should be freed, by amendment, from the old
moralistic limitations that hamper their functioning in the
interest of those whom they were designed to serve —
dependent children who cannot lobby, vote or protest.
AUGUST 1937
249
Mopping Up the Floods
By DOUGLAS GRIESEMER
Director, Public Information, American Red Cross
IN the Ohio and Mississippi Valley floods of 1937 an
unusually large percentage of the sufferers were city
and small-town dwellers, heretofore unknown to social
agencies, entirely and proudly self-reliant. It is estimated
that more than 322,000 families, about 1,450,000 individu-
als, in twelve states were directly affected by the year's
record high water. Of this number, 1,164,946 persons (258,-
877 families) were registered with the various Red Cross
offices for emergency relief or for assistance in rehabilitation.
What types of persons were assisted? How much assist-
ance was given them? What problems arose out of this
flood that had not been encountered in others? What type
of workers administered relief? Now that the period of re-
habilitation is closing, what of the families themselves?
When the disaster occurred, the spring planting season
was at hand; spring business was just opening up; spring
rains were still expected. The Red Cross realized that
speed in rehabilitation was essential to families, farms and
communities.
To investigate the needs of 258,877 families required a
large staff of case workers, case supervisors and responsible
relief directors. Personnel was "borrowed" from scores of
other agencies — from the federal government, the states
and municipalities, public and private social agencies, and in
some instances from metropolitan banks and business or-
ganizations. A system of mutual referrals was organized in
the most extensive example of cooperation between federal,
private and municipal agencies in the history of American
social work. Case work was simplified as far as possible.
Thousands of refugees were concentrated in camps. They
were inoculated against smallpox and typhoid, and efforts
were made to initiate the uninformed into the rules of bal-
anced diet and personal hygiene. Many of the refugee chil-
dren got their first glimpse of a tooth brush in the tent colo-
nies. Much good, it was later proved, came from such Red
Cross teaching, hurried as it often had to be.
At the end of the emergency period homes scattered along
the rivers were a depressing sight. Mud covered everything.
Walls were caving in, plaster falling, many buildings crum-
bling. It was at this time that governmental agencies, in-
cluding the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Con-
servation Corps and others, began the gigantic clean-up
task that was of incalculable value not only to householders
but also to the agencies for family rehabilitation that fol-
lowed. While workers from these federal organizations
were in theory limited to clearing up public property and
highways, and removing dangerous obstacles left by the
flood, they managed to lend a hand to discouraged flood
victims whenever the opportunity offered. These clean-up
efforts greatly speeded rehabilitation.
Flood victims included Americans of all types and con-
ditions— from the well-to-do to the squatters. The tasks of
sorting and rehabilitation were not simplified by this fact.
In some flooded communities, government money had never
been needed for local relief. In others, 62 percent of the
registrations came from families previously known to relief
agencies. Four-fifths of the families in one southern town
were flood victims, and most of them were registered for
assistance. In seven counties of another southern state hired
hands or sharecroppers from 75 percent of the plantations
were on the Red Cross lists, in addition to many registrants
from small towns.
Briefly, Red Cross rehabilitation is based on present and
future needs rather than on past losses. Homes are rebuilt
or repaired for needy home owners, but not for renters.
Furnishings are provided for both. The aim of relief di-
rectors is to restore earning capacity, self-respect and con-
fidence. The Red Cross always gives outright help, never
loans.
Thousands of acres were inundated, and in many locali-
ties water lay on the land long after the flood had passed.
Red Cross assisted the harassed farmers by replacing ma-
chinery, re-stocking farm animals, poultry, and seeds, sup-
plying feed for livestock until hay and grains could be
harvested, and repairing damaged buildings.
When the Disaster Loan Corporation, the Rural Re-
settlement Administration, or the local bank found that an
applicant was not in a position to borrow money for rehabili-
tation, they passed the sufferer along to the Red Cross. Con-
versely, when a Red Cross applicant was found eligible for
a loan, he was referred to local institutions or federal
agencies.
When the waters had receded, surveys of damage had
been made, and building got under way, new problems
arose. Given a small town where three fourths of the homes
need rebuilding or repairing, or a larger city where 60,000
houses must be renovated, a building boom is inevitable.
With a shortage of materials, contractors and independent
builders bid for existing supplies, and wages rise. Extrava-
gant price ranges for materials and labor developed in the
various sections of the flood zone.
It is long-established Red Cross policy to purchase ma-
terials of all sorts — nails, cement, household furniture, food
— in the affected communities, for the dual purpose of re-
storing community morale and stimulating local business.
So far as possible this policy was enforced in 1937.
STRAGGLING registration slowed up later stages of
rehabilitation. After the first "awards" (as Red Cross
grants are known) many families concluded that if the
Joneses did why shouldn't they? As a result, case work had
to be made more thorough even if it delayed operations.
Because, especially in southern communities, so large a
number of flood victims were Negroes, Red Cross took on
doctors, nurses, and case workers from the growing ranks
of competently trained Negroes in some of the larger flooded
cities for work with their own people. Even in the "deep
South," these Negro nurses and doctors were welcomed.
Urban rehabilitation dealt with two types of towns. In a
growing community, with industrial enterprises, active
trade, and a high employment rate, rehabilitation went
forward rapidly. But there were many so-called "dead"
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THE SURVEY
towns in the flood zones. Some had once been important
river shipping points; others had been deserted by industry,
or had exhausted their natural resources of minerals or oil.
In such localities rehabilitation proved more difficult.
In some communities there was the old question of re-
moving families from danger zones periodically flooded.
Such a program would seem to be dictated by economic
common sense, but fulfillment of such plans in many in-
stances was impossible. Squatters, most of them annual
relief clients, refused to move out of their house boats or
riverside shacks. Others, more responsible but neverthe-
less victims of the same annual overflow, refused to move
because "this was good enough for my father and it's good
enough for me." There was delay in final disposal of many
such cases because the families would consider no plans for
permanent repairs until danger of later floods was past.
In two instances, we considered ambitious schemes for
completely relocating small towns. Both communities were
situated on lowlands annually inundated. The health situ-
ation was questionable. Very little industry existed in
either place, and it seemed obvious that the most practical
thing to do would be to move the towns, fire-houses, city
hall, post office and all, to hillside sites a short distance
away. As soon as plans for this move were discussed pub-
licly, the open hillside property jumped to big-city prices.
While negotiations were under way for government help,
the citizens almost to a man decided that if they were to
be moved, someone else would pay for it, and what of the
sewers and the water systems, anyway? It seemed obvious
that relief directors and outsiders carried most of the worry
about future floods, while the town's population sat around
swapping experiences. The question is still open.
As a result of active participation on Red Cross advisory
committees, hundreds of persons have come to consider
community problems in practical terms. In one large south-
ern metropolis, for example, 240 of the city's leading men
and women served on fourteen Red Cross committees, and
heightened understanding of and active participation in
welfare activities in that city are already apparent. Similar
instances of an awakened social sense could be multiplied
many times in telling the story of 1937 flood relief.
The greatest need that workers found among flood vic-
tims was not for food, housing or medical care, but for a
regeneration of drowned morale. Today thousands of re-
built and refurnished homes are to be seen where there
was almost hopeless devastation four months ago. America's
pioneering spirit was as necessary last spring along the Ohio
and the Mississippi as it was when Daniel Boone and his
contemporaries carved their way through the canebrakes
and forests of a new world.
When Outsiders Look In
By WALTER PETTIT
New York School of Social Work
As TOLD TO A. L. NEW
WHEN a secure and well-considered social organi-
zation invites a group of outsiders to criticize and
evaluate its policy, program and practices, what
happens? White-washing? Or battle, murder and sudden
death for the critics?
There are other alternatives. The question could be
answered in many ways by many people. I can only answer
it as one who recently has been the chairman of the advisory
committee which conducted a study of the program of the
Girl Scouts and turned in an 82-page report summarizing
some twelve volumes of findings on the movement.
On the committee I had the privilege of working with a
group of men and women who were keenly interested in one
thing — the discovery and integration of pertinent facts. The
group included Eduard C. Lindeman, of the New York
School of Social Work ; LeRoy C. Bowman, of the United
Parents Association, New York City; the Rev. Edward
Roberts Moore, of the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese
of New York; Elizabeth Kemper Adams, formerly of Smith
College; Mrs. Benjamin Buttenwieser, of the Board of
Child Welfare of New York City; Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady,
now Mrs. William J. Babington Macaulay, Chairman of
the board of directors, and Mrs. Arthur W. Page, chairman
of the program committee of Girl Scouts, Inc. In addition,
Shelby Harrison, of the Russell Sage Foundation, worked
with the committee in an advisory capacity. The study
began in January 1935, with the appointment of Charles
H. Young, a sociologist trained at Chicago and McGill
Universities and at the New York School of Social Work,
as director of the program study staff, and continued for
the better part of two years. That study and the report
based upon it illustrate, I think, a noteworthy approach to
a problem common to many forms of social work.
Most of us grew up in a competitive world, a world of
lalssez faire thinking in business. What happens when we
enter one of the fields loosely defined as social work? Does
the psychology of a lifetime change over night? It would
be pleasant if it did. We all know that it does not. We car-
ry habits of competitive thinking into a field that is inher-
ently cooperative. Every honest social worker recognizes
the truth that all social agencies must work together if
any is to succeed. The problems arise in practice. Working
together means more than checking lists and exchanging
news bulletins. It means subjecting cherished traditions to
modern critical standards and inviting frank suggestions
from those whose experience may qualify them to recom-
mend changes. It means, in short, a kind of organizational
soul-searching that is not to be taken too lightly and that
is certainly not taken too often.
The Girl Scouts recognized this basic principle of social
cooperation when, as part of their general development
plan, they invited "an impartial group of scientists and
educators in no way related to Girl Scouting" to serve on
an advisory committee "with a view to measuring its [the
Girl Scout program's] effectiveness as a means of charac-
ter, spiritual, mental and physical development."
From the laissez faire standpoint, there was no particu-
lar reason why the Girl Scouts should have appointed such
AUGUST 1937
251
a committee at all. The organization, at the end of 1934,
was twenty-two years old — no longer very young, or alto-
gether without precedents of its own. It had almost 350,000
members and was growing steadily. Its national reputation
was excellent. To open the doors of the Girl Scouts to the
critical inspection of outsiders might seem to be asking for
unnecessary trouble.
One way of avoiding that trouble would have been to
throw such restrictions about the investigation as to make
it merely superficial. An organization which wanted to pay-
only lip service to the philosophy of cooperative social work
could have done this. We all know how hard it is for any
group, no matter how honest, to escape the dangers of the
superficial survey. There was an added opportunity for
such restrictions when a new Girl Scout national admin-
istration came into office during the life of the committee.
New administrators are always at liberty to disavow the
works of their predecessors, but this new administration
showed all possible eagerness to preserve the integrity and
thoroughness of the study.
The study began as a survey of the regular Girl Scout
program based on ranks, achievement badges, camping,
health habits, community service and other character-build-
ing elements. The committee felt, however, that programs
are instruments and as such can no more be studied apart
from the persons using them than can one member of the
body be considered apart from the other. The committee
was given carte blanche. It might, if it chose, go completely
revolutionary and turn the whole system topsy-turvy. The
committee felt that no such drastic action was warranted,
a fact which perhaps indicates that really revolutionary
changes seldom need be made in any organization which
is sufficiently alert.
The study staff of the committee considered first the
philosophy of the movement: the aims of the Girl Scouts.
It agreed that the original goal of scouting — the self-devel-
opment of the individual within the group — was sound.
When the study staff went into the field, however, it found
some practices at slight variance with the traditional thought
of the organization. Greater flexibility of the program
seemed the answer to this problem in order to meet the
changing needs of modern girls' life. Staff members attended
troop meetings and watched the program in action. They
talked with leaders, local Girl Scout council members and
commissioners. Their findings enabled the committee to
take the third step, the formulation of recommendations
which would cause the whole program better to serve
girls from seven to eighteen years of age. Naturally, no
hard-and-fast specific rules could be laid down. The com-
mittee made no such attempt. It did suggest, among other
things, an experimental period during which the Girl Scouts
would work out practical applications of the new plan.
Now that the report of the committee has been accepted
by the board of directors of the Girl Scouts, the experi-
mental period has begun, {"reparations are under way for
a more flexible program. Projects in group work, relating
the achievement badge activities closer to the girl's daily
life, are being developed. Training courses for the volun-
teer and professional workers are being modified as fast
as new material can be prepared. The next step will be the
testing of this material by actual use in the field. The re-
sponses of the girls themselves will be carefully recorded.
This is social experimentation in its best sense — it is not
using a group of people as guinea pigs but it is presenting
them with a number of free choices, accepting their reac-
tions and seeing to it that the program exists for the girl
rather than the girl for the program.
The details of the committee's findings are of less con-
cern outside the Girl Scout organization than the procedure
involved. Orientation is a word we use often nowadays. We
speak of the orientation of the individual but we may some-
times forget that organizations also need to consider them-
selves in relation to the social scene of which they are a
part. No efficient way of serving the public can be devised
unless we are aware of where and how the public needs
to be served. And because the public's needs change con-
stantly, we must not lose touch with the thinking in other
fields which may be related to ours. The Girl Scout pro-
gram study and the variations in the Girl Scout program
which are being offered this year are proof that progress
can be made in this direction. The results should be inter-
esting to those of us who are wondering just how we can
determine the value of our own organizations and the loca-
tion of our own particular places in the sun.
A Side-Light on the N. Y. A,
By SARAH ELIZABETH BUNDY
WHEN the first bulletin of directions regarding the
National Youth Administration reached me, I felt
like jumping out my office window and calling it
a day. The burden of my job as girls' vice-principal in a
cosmopolitan highschool was sufficiently heavy and varied
without additions. The thought of creating jobs and placing
girls in them, and of winding and unwinding all the neces-
sary red tape involved in a nation-wide plan of this sort,
filled me with despair.
Now, after nearly two years of experience, I have a few
comments to make. They are in no sense scientific. I am
presenting no statistics ; summarizing no formal survey.
I am merely recording impressions of the NYA experiment
in one situation, more or less typical.
It was clear in the beginning that the easy way would
be to assign students to NYA work during a period of
their regular school day, when teachers are available to
supervise them. But if the project were to fulfill an edu-
cational purpose, I could not reconcile such a policy. As-
cordingly, all assignments were made for hours outside
classroom periods. This required ingenuity to find suitable
employment, especially for girls. Boys can be handled more
readily in assisting persons employed in the school plant.
Added to this perplexity was the fact that candidates,
252
THE SURVEY
at least in the first crop, were largely unemployable. The
initial regulations for the NYA limited the assignability to
students whose families were on certain local relief rolls.
That very fact told the story in many cases. During these
years many persons are on relief through no fault of their
own, yet it is a fact that persons either incompetent or in-
different, as far as employment is concerned, bulk large
on the rolls. Naturally their offspring bear some of the
parental earmarks.
However, "Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and
die." Common sense told me that I must be opportunist
enough to make the most of the task before me. Perhaps,
after all, more good than bad would eventuate. Accordingly,
I ceased inward grumbling and got to work. The negative
and positive impressions follow:
NEGATIVE :
There is danger that a pupil of limited physical strength
as well as of slender pocketbook will be overly ambitious
and take on more than he should. This hazard needs to be
watched carefully. Many of my applicants should use the
hour available for rest and recreation, not for work. I am
thinking now of an over-grown orphan girl of sixteen who
carries the physical result of having broken child labor laws
in her earlier years. Virtually always she has been on her
own. Her size and apparent maturity have been both her
asset and her liability. It was easy for her to pass for
sixteen when she was only fourteen and now at sixteen
she could pass readily for eighteen. That did not protect
her, however, from the results of the back-breaking work
which the laws regulating fruit-packing were definitely
designed to avoid. Now she must go once a week to a clinic
for treatments for physical defects resulting directly from
overwork in childhood. It is apparent that she should not
be an NYA worker, and yet her overwhelming need
prompted me to assign her to after-school desk work which
would be as little drain as possible upon her physical
strength. There are others of the same sort, though possi-
bly no other cases so extreme. She serves to illustrate this
danger.
Providing an NYA assignment to a student of superior
scholarship without giving him any work to do is an oppor-
tunity that I cannot accept. We have certain boys and girls
eligible on that basis, but not one of them has been assigned.
Wrong though my viewpoint may be, I cannot bring myself
so far to lower the standards of scholarship and the incen-
tive to do for the sake of doing, for the reward of thirty
cents an hour.
But quite as serious as the possibility of jeopardizing
physical or intellectual values is that of creating an unfor-
tunate social attitude. In the past, school service has been
rendered freely by many pupils during study periods and
after hours. This is as it should be, for obviously the stu-
dent, through the experience thus gained, usually has bene-
fitted even more than the school itself. I cannot but fear
that this spontaneous expression of loyalty may be endan-
gered if too many activities are assigned on a monetary
basis. It is obvious that a student with limited social sensi-
bilities will question gratuitous service on his part when
he sees that others are being paid for similar work.
In connection with this social attitude is the fact that,
as NYA jobs are assigned to outstanding students, it be-
comes popular to seek them. During the second year of
NYA the applications increased many fold. Community
welfare workers rather too readily advise school children
in needy families to seek such employment without first
ascertaining whether the school quota of assignments (a
number determined by federal allotment, not by the local
school) will permit additions. This, of course, leads only
to embarrassment and disappointment. I am reminded here
of an ironically amusing incident. One day when a notice
appeared on the bulletin board, "NYA checks have ar-
rived. Call for yours," a dozen or more applicants who had
never been assigned, or even approved, expectantly reported
for their checks. Evidently manna from Heaven, or Wash-
ington, is still anticipated.
POSITIVE :
Happily, however, there is another side to the picture.
At the beginning, the disadvantages rather overwhelmed
me, but as months have passed, as payrolls — complicated
though they are — have been tallied and checked, as girls
have thrilled at the receipt of warrants from the federal
government, I have come to realize that wisdom really did
promote the plan, for day by day positive values accumulate.
In the first place, the girls who actually had not had
proper lunches or decent shoes or carfare to bring them
long distances, gained not only relief from these hard-
ships and worries, but an increased self-respect. Even $6 a
month can go far toward providing those small things that
let a girl hold her head up.
A few of these girls had been bad attendance problems,
partly because of lack of carfare and other necessities. But
the lack of incentive to attend regularly also had operated.
With NYA assignments somehow the fact that they had
jobs to do, not merely, I think, because they were being
paid, motivated regular attendance as nothing else had done.
Certainly this fact presents a challenge to a thoughtful
educator. When school stimulates as much responsibility
and interest as a job, truancy largely will disappear.
The experience and training that these girls have received
in their NYA assignments represent a definite virtue of
the plan. I have seen a listless, apparently incompetent girl
transformed within three brief months into an alert, de-
pendable worker, eager to begin her assignment and
reluctant to stop when it was time to go home. One girl,
awkward and oversized — a gland case — who previously
inade minor ailments the excuse for staying home, was as-
signed to serve ice water at noon in the cafeteria. She has
scarcely missed a day and is far more agile and decidedly
neater in appearance than when I doubtfully assigned her.
Most of the NYA tasks have been really worth-while,
not, as I anticipated, mere "busy work." Some good natured
teachers have prolonged their own day to assume the role
of employers. But in many instances virtue truly has had
its own reward for their student employes have rendered
service far beyond our most optimistic expectations.
The NYA is a temporary agency, a part of the federal
government's relief program. It must be regarded as an
emergency undertaking liable to liquidation. But if out of
the NYA experience throughout the country a few hun-
dreds of thousands of boys and girls of highschool and
college age become inoculated with the virus of steady work;
if the positive results outweigh increasingly the negative;
if some of us who have professional association with the
plan are learning lessons and gaining new ideas which will
carry over into permanent channels, then surely the NYA
can be counted a success.
AUGUST 1937
253
The Common Welfare
Repartee
A MEDAL for adjectival invective, all unsullied by pro-
fanity, seems due to Lieut. Col. B. B. Somervell, WPA
administrator for New York City. Commenting on the
charge by Ralph M. Easley of the National Civic Federa-
tion that the New York WPA supervisory and administra-
tive staff is loaded with "ex-convicts, former bootleggers,
drunkards, people expelled from their previous connections
for various delinquencies, political ward-heelers, professional
agitators, moral perverts, etc.," the doughty Colonel replied:
"It is a lot of fatuous twaddle, illogical, irrational, unreason-
able, imprudent, ridiculous, absurd, foolish, preposterous,
ludicrous, incautious, careless and specious."
For Government Service
ANEW institute of local and state government, which
promises to go below the treetops and down to the
grassroots of public administration, is announced by the
University of Pennsylvania. The new institute, supported
for its first six years by a gift of $240,000 from an unnamed
donor, is the first major development in the University's
bicentennial program designed to strengthen its work in
various fields. Prof. Stephen B. Whitney of the Wharton
School of Business Administration is acting director.
The principal objectives of the new institute are :
To establish a center of practical and printed knowledge
about problems of municipal, borough, county, township and
state government.
To maintain, with the center, an advisory, consulting and
informational service for the benefit of local and state govern-
ment units in Pennsylvania.
To maintain a center for the training of governmental ex-
perts and administrators, for "in-service" service, and for the
education in local and state government affairs of students
who expect to enter business or the professions.
To maintain a center for conferences, lectures and discus-
sions relating to major questions in the improvement of city,
local and state government in Pennsylvania and other states
as a means of educating public opinion.
To conduct research into problems which the development
of this program may bring to the surface with particular re-
gard to problems brought up by local and state government
officials in Pennsylvania.
By and For Women
AS part of a world-wide study of the wages and home
responsibilities of women wage earners, the U.S.
Women's Bureau has prepared for the International Labor
Office a report on women in American industry. A num-
ber of women's organizations cooperated in gathering the
material for the report. In connection with this task rep-
resentatives of the participating groups agreed to formulate
what they have called a Women's Charter, embodying "the
social and economic objectives of women, for women and
for society as a whole." The charter is drawn as a possible
basis for legislation. It represents in general the point of
view of those who differ from proponents of the "equal
rights amendment," which would wipe out all laws apply-
254
ing solely to women, not only discriminatory laws of prop-
erty, guardianship, and so on, but also protective legislation
for women wage earners.
This split among women's organizations was evidenced
dramatically at the recent convention of the National Fed-
eration of Business and Professional Women when the dele-
gates unanimously rejected the charter and endorsed the
"equal rights amendment."
The charter is now being circulated in many countries
for study, endorsement, suggested amendment or rejection.
In this country, the Women's Charter Groups will invite
each organization endorsing the objectives of the charter to
send representatives to a national convention, probably dur-
ing the coming fall or winter, "to arrange for organization
of the long time movement which the Charter's purposes
imply."
The charter calls for full political and civil rights for
women, full opportunity for education, economic oppor-
tunity and security. It further provides:
Where special exploitation of women workers exists, such as
low wages which provide less than the living standards at-
tainable, unhealthful working conditions, or long hours of
work which result in physical exhaustion and denial of the
right to leisure, such conditions shall be corrected through so-
cial and labor legislation, which the world's exprience shows
to be necessary.
Behind the Totals
IF you are one of those who can take your figures straight
and no questions asked you will be able to believe, be-
cause relief expenditures are going down and social security
expenditures are going up, that security has turned the cor-
ner and relief is on the run. While the total figures unques-
tionably show such an indication the facts behind the figures
are not unmixed, and the figures themselves are not as sim-
ple as the mouth-filling totals make them seem.
The statisticians of the Social Security Board, just now
making a beginning in assembling all persuasions of public
assistance figures in one piece, tell us that payments to needy
persons from all public sources were $33,684,000 less during
the first four months of 1937 than during the same period in
1936. One trouble with that figure as a true indication of a
national condition is that from January to April 1936,
WPA was at its peak, its expenditures for March of that
year, for example, running to $191,530,000. During the first
four months of 1937 WPA relief wages were $28 million a
month less than a year ago. In view of that difference in one
segment of the relief circle, the whole drop of $33 million
plus for four months, loses some of its significance.
It would be comforting to believe that emergency relief is
dropping because the security services are taking over the
dependent children, the aged and the blind. To a certain
extent that is true but there are too many variables, too
many gaps in information to permit the statement to stand
alone. It is a sorry fact that many states, pressed to secure
federal aid from the security board are putting all their
relief eggs in the security basket. The aged and to a lesser
degree dependent children and the blind are doing better
THE SURVEY
than before, but the family that misses a category and re-
quires general relief is, in a good many states, just out of luck.
Relief rolls have gone down sharply in those states because
there has been little or no provision for general relief since
the federal government went out of "the business."
In states that have maintained a general relief program
along with the developing security services, varying pictures
are presented. In some the trend of total relief has been sig-
nificantly downward in recent months, but in others the
reverse is true. For example Minnesota had in the first four
months of 1936 a total case load, counting WPA, the se-
curity categories and general relief, fluctuating month by
month around 128,000. During the same period this year the
total load fluctuated around 156,000. Similarly, Wisconsin
in March 1936 had 145,181 by the same inclusive count of
cases; in March 1937, 158,127. In both these states the
continuing need for emergency relief has been recognized
and met. In each, general relief has declined somewhat but
less than the security grants have increased.
Ever since the FERA departed this life we have lacked
a complete statistical picture of relief in this country. The
effort of the Security Board to bring all the pieces together
is wholly commendable. But gross comparisons between par-
ticular months are not alone convincing. To see the true
picture it still is necessary to look behind the totals. Both
perspective and detail are necessary for safe interpretation
of statistics.
Public Service Unions
THE war between John L. Lewis and William Green,
rivals for national labor leadership, has spread from
the industrial to the public service field. The United Fed-
eral Workers of America, affiliated with Lewis' Committee
for Industrial Organization, is undertaking an intensive
organization drive, directed by Jacob Baker, former assist-
ant administrator of FERA and WPA. Two other national
organizations are already in the field, the National Federa-
tion of Federal Employes, formerly an American Federa-
tion of Labor affiliate, now an independent group, and the
American Federation of Government Employes, chartered
by the AF of L, after the split with the National. These
two unions have enrolled a relatively small number of the
more than 800,000 federal employes.
The CIO has also chartered the State, County and Mu-
nicipal Workers of America, a rival to the American Fed-
eration of State, County and Municipal Employes, an AF
of L union launched less than two years ago. This new CIO
affiliate has started an organizing campaign among the
2,000,000 eligible workers under the leadership of Abram
Flaxer, former employe of the Emergency Relief Bureau
in New York City.
At a July press conference, in reply to a question as to
collective bargaining for government employes, President
Roosevelt pointed out that the right is necessarily a limited
one, since public administrative officials have little or no
authority to regulate either wages or hours of work. Public
employes, he reasoned, can look for action on these matters
only from the appropriate federal, state or local legislative
body. The President submitted, however, that there should
be full collective bargaining between employes and the heads
of public agencies in matters where administrators have
discretion.
In line with this view, Mr. Lewis has announced that
strikes or picketing by either one of the CIO unions of
public employes would be a violation of the organization
policy of the CIO.
A resolution making it unlawful for federal employes to
strike, or for an organization of federal workers to call a
strike has been introduced in Congress by Representative
C. E. Hoffman of Michigan.
Scottsboro
IN a snarl of inconsistencies, the sensational "Scottsboro
case" was decided anew last month. Of the nine Negroes
held for six and a half years on the same testimony, four
were found guilty of rape, one sentenced to death, one to
prison for ninety-nine years, two for seventy-five years; the
cases against five were nolle prossed, but one of the five
pleaded guilty to assaulting a deputy and was given a twenty
year term, the judge refusing to take into account the years
already served because "the state had dropped the other
charge."
In March 1931 the nine young Negroes were arrested
at Paint Rock, Ala., charged with the rape of two white
women on a freight train. Eleven jury trials followed.
Twice the death sentences of all nine were affirmed by the
state supreme court. Twice the U.S. Supreme Court set
aside the convictions, ruling first that the youths were with-
out benefit of adequate counsel, later that their constitu-
tional rights had been violated by the exclusion of Negroes
from jury lists in Alabama. Ruby Bates, one of the com-
plaining witnesses, repudiated her testimony and declared
the whole story "framed." The case was complicated by
wrangles among radical defense groups, and by fresh preju-
dices aroused when the defendants were represented by a
much publicized lawyer from the North, who happens to
be a Jew. A prosecutors' statement following the four re-
leases, explains that one defendant "was practically blind"
at the time of the crime, and another "was suffering with a
severe venereal disease and [according to medical testi-
mony] it would have been very painful for him to have com-
mitted that crime and . . .he would not have had any
inclination to commit it." The other two were "juveniles,"
twelve and thirteen years of age at the time of their arrest.
The four youths were raced across the Alabama state line
and taken to New York by their counsel, Samuel Leibowitz.
"Our plans aren't definite," Mr. Leibowitz states, "but the
boys ought to be placed in a vocational school where they
can be trained in some trade."
Joseph Lee
OELDOM does a development in American life owe as
^J much to a single individual as public recreation owes to
Joseph Lee of Boston who died late in July. Of a distin-
guished family, Mr. Lee early in life decided to devote him-
self to social welfare. His insight into boy life in congested
areas shaped his career. In 1898 he developed the Columbus
Avenue playground in Boston, a modest acorn from which
grew the oat whose branches today reach far and wide to
the 1122 cities which now support public playgrounds and
recreation centers. In 1906, with Jane Addams, Jacob Riis
and others, Mr. Lee organized the Playground and Recrea-
tion Association, now the National Recreation Association
through which, as president, he since has exercised his rare
talent for leadership. When, in 1926, Harvard University
made him an L.L.D. the citation read, "Joseph Lee: a
citizen ever laboring for the welfare of the public and the
joyful growth of children.
AUGUST 1937
255
The Social Front
WPA
D Y a recent ruling of the federal WPA,
state administrators may exempt up
to 10 percent of the workers on any
project from certification of need pro-
vided that the number of exemptions for
the entire state does not exceed 5 percent
of the total employed. By the same rul-
ing state administrators may exempt 10
percent of the persons on any project
from the established schedule of monthly
earnings — the "security wage" — with the
same 5 percent proviso for the state as
a whole.
This ruling modifies one made in
March which limited exemptions to 5
percent and left state administrators no
discretion. Difficulties in local adminis-
tration and resultant heavy pressure on
Washington are, "they say," responsible
for the modification.
Rotation — The policy of dismissing
first those longest on the payroll, ini-
tiated in the recent heavy reductions in
WPA, is to be systematized in New
York City this fall. Lieut. Col. B. B.
Somervell, city administrator, has an-
nounced that in order to discourage the
idea that WPA is a "career service"
and to give employables on home relief
a chance, beginning October 1 he will
return to home relief rolls at the rate
of five thousand a month those workers
who have been on WPA for two years
or longer. Vacancies thus created, will
be filled from the ranks of the 99,261
employable workers who were on the
rolls of the Emergency Relief Bureau
on July 1. This rotation plan will effect
a 75 percent turnover in WPA in the
course of two years — if WPA continues
that long.
A recent analysis of WPA rolls in
New York showed that among the 174,-
478 persons on WPA on June 24, 80,829
had been there since it started in August
1935, and 142,771 or 81 percent had
been there prior to Decem'ber 31, 1935.
Further analysis is being made to deter-
mine how many of the present employes
were on CWA or on the private or state
work relief programs that preceded the
federal.
Commenting on the policy of rotation
Colonel Somervell said:
"Some of these people have been on
work relief so long that it seems doubt-
ful that they will ever find reemploy-
ment. Age, lack of will to seek employ-
ment and an actual scarcity of available
jobs are among the factors which make
for the long stay on WPA.
"In fairness to the people who have
been on home relief through all this
period, we believe that they should be
given the same chance to refurbish their
skills and see what they can do about
finding private employment."
The New York WPA which always
has denied vigorously any charges of in-
efficiency, is now making an outspoken
drive in the direction of efficiency. In a
memorandum to 10,000 supervisory em-
ployes Colonel Somervell called on them
sharply to bring projects up to the effi-
ciency level of private industry or of
other government departments. "The
'WPA look' of certain projects must be
eliminated. The 'WPA look' needs no
interpretation and must be wiped off the
map of New York City."
Denial — The usual summer charge
that WPA is creating a shortage of sea-
sonal labor is sharply denied by Corring-
ton Gill, assistant administrator, who
says that in an investigation of seventy-
five separate charges in twenty states not
a single charge was substantiated. Cit-
ing specific instance he says: "Our in-
vestigation discovered a shortage of can-
nery labor in only one of twenty-nine
plants visited in Delaware and Mary-
land, and that was temporary. In the
town where this plant was located only
nine people were employed on WPA, all
older women clearly unsuited for can-
nery work."
Replying to the charge that southern
Negroes were being taken in large num-
bers to Nassau County, N. Y.( because
local men would not leave WPA for
farm work, Mr. Gill said: "Careful in-
vestigation showed that fewer than
twenty Negroes had been taken into the
county. Negro workers were receiving $2
for a 12-hour day. Few local workers
will accept this rate as common labor
in other industries is paid $4 to $5 for
an 8-hour day. On WPA rolls we found
only a very small number of farm labor-
ers and on local relief rolls only one.
Yet the National Reemployment Service
had a generous supply of such workers
on its registers but had been called upon
in only one or two instances."
No Pot of Gold — The rainbow dream
that large nuntbers of the unemployed
could make a living for themselves by
going out into the wide open spaces and
digging for gold, has been neatly dis-
solved by the cold facts of WPA re-
search. In 1935 many thousands of peo-
ple, no one knows how many, went out
prospecting, with or without a grub
stake. Some 28,000 of them actually got
enough gold to sell. They worked an
average of forty-five days in the year,
and their gross earnings averaged only
$72, or $1.60 per working day. The
study, which is a part of WPA's Na-
tional Research Project on Reemploy-
ment Opportunities, covers placer min-
ing in seventeen states. It is, on the
whole, says WPA, "a story of itinerant
men and women who, when they lost
their jobs at home trekked in search of
the 'end of the rainbow.' Usually they
had no training or experience in mining
and were foredoomed to fail." Among
the case histories in the report are those
of four young sailors, a musician and his
wife, an architect and his wife, a gassed
war veteran and two young city women.
Compensation
£OMETIMES it is hard to tell who
is and who isn't covered by the social
security program. Frequently the Bureau
of Internal Revenue has to draw the line.
For instance, if your work is raising gold-
fish, mushrooms, orchids or rabbits you
are not a farmer within the meaning of
the Social Security Act. If you work on a
railroad which operates between the
United States and Canada, you pay so-
cial security taxes on the approximate
proportion of your wage which you earn
on the soil of the U.S.A. In Wisconsin, if
you are a bride and lose your job because
your employer has a rule against the em-
ployment of married women, you are not
entitled to unemployment compensation.
But if you are a Wisconsin worker dis-
charged because you misunderstood
working hours, you can collect compen-
sation. The "social security status of
radio performers" is at this writing still
uncertain, with neither sponsor nor
broadcasting company eager to assume
the role of "employer" for purposes of
social security taxation.
Fifty-one Laws — Every state in the
Union (also the District of Columbia,
Alaska and Hawaii) has now passed an
unemployment compensation law, and all
fifty-one of these measures have been ap-
proved by the Social Security Board. The
Florida, Missouri and Illinois acts were
approved during July, the last — Illinois
— on July 16. According to the Board's
estimates, nearly twenty-one million
workers are now employed in jobs where
they have the protection of unemploy-
ment compensation.
Each of the last three state laws pro-
vides for a state-wide pooled fund, to
which employers of eight or more con- ,
tribute, and out of which weekly benefits
will be paid to qualified workers up to a
maximum of $15. They also anticipate r
the future operation of merit-rating pro- r
visions under which the rates of em--r
256
THE SURVEYY
ployers' contributions will be geared to
their benefit and contribution experience.
None of these laws require contributions
from employes; and they provide for
benefits to workers in part-time and
seasonal jobs. Benefit payments in Flor-
ida and Missouri will begin in January,
1939, and in Illinois in July, 1939. Under
the Florida and Illinois laws benefits are
computed on the basis of the worker's
regular full-time weekly wage; under the
Missouri law, on the basis of total wages
during the quarter year of highest earn-
ings within a period of approximately two
years. In Florida and Illinois benefits
may be paid for as many as sixteen weeks
during a year; in Missouri for twelve.
In Florida the administrative agency is
the Industrial Commission, and in Mis-
souri a new agency, the Unemployment
Compensation Commission. The Illinois
law provides for a commissioner of place-
ment and unemployment compensation
under the Director of the Department
of Labor.
Administration — In Mississippi,
"striking workmen are not eligible for
unemployment compensation benefits," ac-
cording to a recent ruling by Commission
Chairman Wheeless. He adds, "Refusal
to take a strike-vacated job does not make
an unemployed worker ineligible."
In Massachusetts, about forty branch
offices will probably be established under
the State Unemployment Compensation
Commission. The plan is to have a branch
office within one carfare of every indus-
trial center in the state.
Arizona employers, including motor
truck operators, railroads and mining
concerns, have petitioned the state com-
mission for changes in the report proce-
dure. They suggest that instead of quar-
terly reports to the state, they report
only when a worker leaves his employ-
ment for another job, in which event the
employer would notify the commission of
the term of employment and the total
wages paid. ... In New York, many
large employers will use punch cards in
lieu of written or typed quarterly reports
to the Division of Placement and Unem-
ployment insurance. In this way employ-
ers may utilize their modern recording
and tabulating machines in reporting the
earnings of individual workers, at a sav-
ing to themselves and to the state.
Labor Trouble — When four clerks
were discharged from the Baltimore
office of the Social Security Board in the
spring, one of the employes' unions
charged that anti-union and racial preju-
dice caused the dismissals. Hearings were
held with Louis Resnick, director of the
board's informational service, acting as
referee by agreement of the union and
the board. After studying the transcript
of the hearings, the arguments, excep-
tions and exhibits, the board accepted the
recommendations of the referee: that the
dismissal of two clerks be sustained be-
cause "conclusive evidence was presented
as to unsatisfactory work such as would
warrant dismissal"; that the other two
dismissed clerks be reinstated because
"there was such conflict of evidence of
satisfactory and unsatisfactory work as
to raise some question of the justice of
their dismissal." The Social Security
Board Employes' Union announces that
the case will be carried to the National
Labor Relations Board. Legal counsel
for the union will be furnished by the
United Federal Workers of America, a
C.I.O. affiliate.
Trailer Office — A trailer as an "an-
nex" to a district office is proposed by
the West Virginia unemployment com-
pensation department. The trailer would
visit the seven counties of the Parkers-
burg district each month, eliminating the
necessity for eight branch offices to serve
the five thousand covered workers in the
district. If the plan proves successful, an
additional trailer would be acquired for
general use throughout the state, supple-
menting the various branch and district
offices.
Old Age Benefits
COCIAL Security field offices took over
from the Post Office Department last
month responsibility for continuing the
assignment of account numbers to eligible
workers. Since November, when the en-
rollment began, approximately thirty mil-
lion workers have applied for social se-
curity accounts. With the vast majority
of numbers assigned, the task of assem-
bling information for individual wage
records is now well under way. During
July, employers throughout the country
From the pioneer's musket on the wall to
the Social Security Act, the defenses of
Americans "against hunger and danger" are
discussed primer fashion in a new Social
Security Board publication, Why Social
Security? This compact and simple account
of "the development of measures for social
security" was written by Mary Ross of the
Board's Bureau of Research and Statistics
and illustrated by Hendrik Van Loon.
AUGUST 1937
filed with the Bureau of Internal Rev-
enue returns showing the name, account
number and the total taxable wages paid
each employe during the first six months
of 1937, as well as the total taxable
wages and the total number of employes
to whom taxable wages were paid dur-
ing the same period. Hereafter these re-
turns will be made quarterly.
Lump Sum Payments — Field repre-
sentatives have some 20,000 filled out
Treasury forms regarding employes who
have reached the age of sixty-five or who
have died since January 1, 1937. Since
benefits are based on wages earned since
January 1, the lump sum payments now
being made are relatively small. The
largest claim so far approved was for a
death payment amounting to $192.50. The
worker's earnings in 1937, up to his death
March 1 1 had totaled almost $6000 from
two jobs. This entire amount could be
counted in computing benefits since the
Social Security Act permits total earnings
up to $3000 a year from each of any
number of covered jobs to be used as
the basis for determining the benefit.
"No Information"— The Board has
issued a ruling expressly forbidding its
members, officers or employes to "pro-
duce or disclose to any person or before
any tribunal, directly or indirectly,
whether in response to a subpoena or
otherwise, any record ... or any infor-
mation . . . officially acquired pertaining
to any person." The ruling followed nu-
merous requests from families, organi-
zations, associations, corporations, law-
yers, and municipal and state authorities,
asking the whereabouts of individuals
thought to have applied for social secur-
ity account numbers.
Proposed Amendments — A series of
recommendations liberalizing the old age
benefit titles of the Social Security Act
are included in a report of the Committee
on Old Age Security of the Twentieth
Century Fund. The committee urges
minimum old age benefit payments of $20
a month, with $15 more for married
couples. The committee also urges a
three-year advance in the starting date
of benefit payments — from 1942 to 1939.
It also recommends that coverage be wid-
ened to include most of the groups now
excluded. Declaring that the taxes are
now too high for low income groups, the
committee suggests that the tax limit be
two percent, and that it remain at one
percent until that amount is no longer
sufficient to pay benefits as they fall due.
... In Denver, the social security com-
mittee of the Junior Chamber of Com-
merce recommended to the annual con-
vention of the group that it endorse ex-
tension of the benefits of the Act to agri-
cultural and domestic workers and that
the method of financing be changed to "a
gross income tax" or "a federal sales
257
tax". ... A memorial from the Cali-
fornia legislature called upon Congress
to amend the Act so that such states as
may desire to do so may bring employes
of the state and of other political sub-
divisions of the state within the old age
benefit provisions. . . . The American
Association of Social Workers is urging
the passage of H.R. 6442 which proposes
the elimination from Titles II and VIII
of the Social Security Act of paragraphs
excepting those employed in charitable
and other non-profit organizations from
the benefits of the Act.
Record and Report — T h e proceed-
ings of the tenth national conference on
social security, bringing together a valu-
able collection of timely materials, have
been published by the American Associa-
tion for Social Security in a 215-page vol-
ume. The record covers the Association's
decade of work, as well as current de-
velopments in the field. (Price $2 post-
paid of The Survey).
Public Welfare
"\\7ITH all the discussion of a new
federal department of welfare, the
exact phraseology of the favored bill
proposing such a department is worthy
of quotation. Title IV, section 401 of
Senate bill 2700, introduced on June 15
by the late Senator Robinson reads:
"There shall be at the seat of govern-
ment an executive department to be
known as the Department of Welfare,
and a Secretary of Welfare, who shall
be the head thereof, and shall be ap-
pointed by the President, by and with
the advice and consent of the Senate, and
shall have a tenure of office and salary
like those of the heads of the other exe-
cutive departments.
"There shall be in the Department of
Welfare an Undersecretary of Welfare,
who shall be appointed by the President,
by and with the advice and consent of
the Senate, and two Assistant Secretaries
of Welfare and a Solicitor, who shall be
appointed by the Secretary of Welfare,
all of whom shall exercise such func-
tions as may be prescribed by the Secre-
tary of Welfare or required by law. The
Undersecretary and the Solicitor shall
each receive a salary of $10,000 per an-
num and the compensation of the As-
sistant Secretaries shall be fixed in ac-
cordance with the Classification Act of
1923, as amended.
"The Secretary of Welfare shall pro-
mote the public health, safety and sani-
tation; the protection of the consumer;
the cause of education ; the relief of un-
employment and of the hardship and
suffering caused thereby; the relief of
the needy and distressed; the assistance
of the aged; and the relief and vocational
rehabilitation of the physically disabled ;
and in general shall coordinate and pro-
mote public health, education and wel-
fare activities."
Light and Leading — The New
York State Charities Aid Association is
sponsoring two studies of public welfare
administration which it believes will
throw light into dark places in states
other than New York. The first is of
civil service examinations for public
welfare positions. This includes analysis
of the selection and examination proced-
ures of some twenty municipal civil ser-
vice commissions in New York state, and
of examinations given for public welfare
positions by civil service bodies in various
parts of the country. The second study
is of methods and procedures in New
York counties that have abandoned the
town relief plan in favor of the county
system.
Citizen Boards — Citizen boards of
public welfare we have, and citizen
boards we probably shall continue to
have. So let's be realistic about them,
says, in effect, the American Public Wel-
fare Association. Hence it commissioned
R. Clyde White of the University of
Chicago, to prepare a discussion which
it has now published with the title, Pub-
lic Welfare Boards and Committee Re-
lationships. (23 pp. Price 35 cents from
the APWA, 850 East 58 Street, Chi-
cago.) Professor White does not dip into
controversy but sticks to the theme of the
relationships which will secure and en-
hance the values of citizen participation.
He emphasizes the democratic nature of
public welfare services, the broad policy
making functions of citizen boards, the
distinction between the administrative
duties of the staff and the direction of
policies by the board, lay participation
through advisory committees and volun-
teers, and the joint obligation of board,
committees and staff for interpretation.
Tailored to Fit— The vexed ques-
tion of minimum qualifications for direc-
tors of county welfare units has been
faced realistically by Georgia, which is
in the throes of reorganizing its state
department of public welfare to meet the
requirements of the social security act.
Given the wide differences in conditions
in rural and urban districts four stand-
ards have been set up. In Fulton County,
in effect Atlanta, the requirements are
stiff, shaking down to a minimum of a
college degree and at least ten years
"progressive and successful employment"
in a recognized agency. The other coun-
ties are divided into three groups, with
a college education always preferred but
with high school graduation acceptable,
and with experience shading down to a
minimum of two years.
GGG Studied— Kansas has analyzed
records of 658 enrollees for CCC who
were accepted in January 1937. Their
collective income for a year amounts to
$789,000 from which the CCC-ers have
made allottments to families of widely
varying relief status, including some on
other federal or county programs, or
both, some who are eligible for county
relief but not receiving it, and some who
are receiving no relief of any kind.
Florida found that between July 1936
and January 1937, a total of 2396 boys
left CCC camps in the state. More than
half received honorable discharges; i. e.
were needed at home or elsewhere, or
had some physical disability which was
"no fault of their own," or left to accept
employment. Administrative and dishonor-
able discharges of 921 enrollees included
413 for desertion, 205 for refusal to
work, 127 for failure to abide by rules,
26 for theft and conduct involving "moral
turpitude," and 1 1 for conviction in
courts.
Labor Legislation
THE report of the Senate Committee
on Labor and Education on July 8
drastically revised the original provisions
of the proposed federal wage-hour bill.
The Labor Standards Board which the
bill would create, could fix minimum
wages not to exceed forty cents an hour,
but ranging below that according to the
situation of individual industries and
communities. Similarly, the bill itself as
reported sets no top limit for a work
week, but specifies that the Board's
standard must not be less than forty
hours. The Senate bill covers workers in
enterprises in interstate commerce with
three exceptions: railway workers other
than maintenance-of-way employes; farm
labor; seamen. The original plan was to
exempt all employers of fewer than fif-
teen persons. The child labor provisions
forbid the employment of children under
sixteen on goods sold in interstate com-
merce, and of those under eighteen in
hazardous occupations. Child workers in
agriculture and children working for
their parents are not covered, except that
the U. S. Children's Bureau would be
empowered to prevent their employment
during school hours. At this writing, the
House bill is still in committee.
On Behalf of Children — South
Carolina's new child labor law establishes
sixteen years as the minimum age for em-
ployment during school hours, and at any
time in factories, mines or mills. Domes-
tic and farm labor are exempted. It per-
mits children to work as early as five
a.m., and as late as eight p.m., and does
not limit employment of minors between
sixteen and eighteen in hazardous occu-
pations. . . . North Carolina's new child
labor law has similar age provisions, but
is more adequate in safeguarding the
hours during which children may work
and their employment in hazardous jobs.
. . . The Secretary of Labor, Frances
Perkins, has authorized an extension of
258
THE SURVEY
the temporary exemption under the
Walsh-Healy Act which permits the em-
ployment of girls of sixteen to eighteen
in the cotton textile industry. She re-
fused to grant the permanent exemption
asked by the Cotton Textile Institute.
Silicosis— A program of medical and
engineering research to combat the indus-
trial hazard of "dusty diseases" is an-
nounced by the Air Hygiene Foundation
of Pittsburgh, which has headquarters
at Mellon Institute. The plan calls for
studies at Mellon Institute, Saranac
Laboratory, Harvard School of Public
Health, University of Pennsylvania Hos-
pital, Singer Memorial Laboratory, and
for work in cooperation with the U. S.
Bureau of Mines.
Homework^-New York contractors
cannot send nor give out industrial home-
work to workers living in New Jersey,
under a cooperative arrangement recently
announced by the labor departments of
the two states. Under the New York
law, enacted in March 1935, industrial
homework has been prohibited in the
men's and boys' outer clothing industry
and in the men's and boys' neckwear in-
dustry. In a letter explaining the rul-
ing, Commissioner John J. Toohey of
New Jersey states, "The famous Rinaldi
case, where materials manufactured in
New York . . . were finished in a cellar
in Newark by child labor and Negro
labor, helped us to decide to try this
plan."
Minimum Wage — Under the New
York minimum wage law, the division
of women in industry and minimum wage
of the State Labor Department is mak-
ing budget studies in different sections
of the state, as the basis for setting wage
rates that will insure an income "suffi-
cient to provide adequate maintenance
and to protect health." It will require
at least four months to complete this
study, and the first wage board there-
fore cannot begin work before Septem-
ber. The law enacted this year is sub-
stantially the same as the act passed in
1933 and declared unconstitutional in
1936, except that it provides that direc-
tory orders may be made mandatory in
three instead of in nine months. . . . The
new District Minimum Wage Board be-
gins its task with a survey of wages paid
women and minors in the District of
Columbia, making use of Department of
Labor data. A recent study of payroll
data for a week in March or April 1937,
shows that among 12,742 women in
laundries, stores, hotels and restaurants,
cleaning establishments and beauty par-
lors, about one fifth earned less than ten
dollars a week, and about one third less
than twelve dollars. ... In Minnesota,
a newly created advisory board of five
employers, five employes and one pub-
lic representative is considering new
In easy words and amusing little black and white "sociographics" the Pennsylvania
Department of Labor and Industry offers "a simple, non-technical digest" of the provisions
of the state's new Unemployment Compensation Law as it affects both employers and
workers. The pamphlet is an example of important public information made interesting
and understandable to all the people. Obtainable from the Department, Harrisburg, Pa.
minimum wage rates in line with present
living costs. ... A Commission for Mini-
mum Wage has been appointed in Okla-
homa, the first state to enact a minimum
wage law covering both men and women
workers. . . . The Puerto Rican minimum
wage law of 1919 has been revived as a
result of the recent Supreme Court de-
cision. The law fixes minimum rates of
$6 a week for women over eighteen, $4
a week for younger workers. Because of
the re-establishment of these standards,
practically all commercial needlework on
the island has stopped, and the question
of the application of the law to home-
work industries has been carried to the
courts. Employers of tobacco strippers
and fruit canners also claim exemption
under the law, which does not cover
"agricultural industries."
By and For Consumers
VX7HAT kind of national organization
is needed to promote the consumer
interest? This question will be the sub-
ject of a three-months study by the Pol-
lak Foundation for Economic Research,
Newton, Mass. In the fall a comprehen-
sive report will be issued, with recom-
mendations concerning aims, scope, meth-
ods, finances and constitution of a na-
tional consumer organization, and its re-
lation to numerous other agencies, public
and private.
Go-op College — A training school for
cooperative executives and educators will
be opened in New York this fall, accord-
ing to an announcement by James P.
Warbasse, president of the Cooperative
League (167 West 12 Street, New
York). The first term will open October
11 and run for eight weeks, after which
students will be given eight weeks of
practical experience in cooperative organi-
zations. The new undertaking, officially
known as The Cooperative Institute, is
expected to enroll students from many
sections of the country. Applicants must
have the equivalent of a high school edu-
cation and pass an aptitude test. Students
with a college degree are preferred.
Rural Electrification — In completing
its second year of work, the Rural Elec-
trification Administration announces that
it has allotted $60 million to construct
power lines which will bring light and
power for the first time to 200,000 farm
homes. The lion's share of these loans
have been made to cooperatives. Ohio
Farm Bureau cooperatives, for example,
have completed power lines to serve near-
ly 5000 farms in seven counties. Projects
have been outlined for twenty-seven coun-
ties, and it is estimated that 50,000 farms
will be included when the program is fin-
ished. Indiana Farm Bureau cooperatives
have eight projects under construction
and eighteen additional projects have
completed their membership drives and
secured certificates of public convenience
and safety. Wisconsin co-ops have set up
the Wisconsin Rural Electric Cooperative
Association to rush the construction of
power lines in rural sections of the state.
Iowa cooperatives are taking the leader-
ship in the construction of generating
plants to furnish their own power. The
Norris-Rayburn Act, giving permanent
status to REA, provides for the alloca-
tion of $40 million annually for the next
nine years on 20-year loans for the con-
struction of lines which will extend light
and power to 85 percent of the American
farm homes now without electric ser-
Grading Law — A New York law re-
quiring that all packages in which fruits
and vegetables are shipped into the state
must be labeled with official standards
and grades, went into effect June 1. Even
though this applies to wholesale contain-
ers, the consumer can learn from the deal-
er the grade of the produce. In many in-
stances dealers use open crates, on which
the government marking is printed, for
AUGUST 1937
259
display purposes. Each grade has a speci-
fic meaning as to size, ripeness, condition,
and so on, to which the product must
conform. Copies of the standard grades
and what they mean are furnished free
on request to the U. S. Department of
Agriculture, Washington.
Eastern Wholesale— A year aftei
voting to set up its own warehouse and
distribute co-op label products, Eastern
Cooperative Wholesale (112 Charlton
Street, New York) reports that it is
handling 155 products and serving 157
stores and buying clubs. Business of $160,-
000 for the first four months of 1937
represented a gain of 86 percent over the
same period a year ago. The co-op has
opened a Boston office to serve New Eng-
land cooperatives.
Tax Label — The use of a stamp or
label for every article sold showing how
much of the purchase price goes for taxes
has been suggested by Representative
Fred A. Hartley, Jr. of New Jersey, ac-
cording to National Consumer News.
Holding that the consumer is "the noblest
taxpayer of them all," Mr. Hartley cites
the example of the car owner who, he
claims, is taxed 345 times. There are
twenty-seven taxes on the purchase of a
car, he submits, 117 on its upkeep, and
201 taxes on the oil and gasoline used.
The tax on gasoline is greater than its
wholesale cost, Mr. Hartley states. There
are 146 taxes on drugs and medicines,
amounting to about a third of their cost,
he adds.
Standardization Projects— Two new
standardization projects in the consumer
goods field are being undertaken by the
American Standards Association, on the
request of its advisory committee on con-
sumer goods (29 West 39 Street, New
York). One project is the development of
standard definitions of terms used in re-
tailing to describe various types of mer-
chandise. Such a "dictionary" has al-
ready had marked success in Great Brit-
ain in clearing up the confusion between
manufacturer, retailer and consumer in
regard to basic description of goods. The
second project is the standardization of
sizes of children's garments. Under the
auspices of the U. S. Bureau of Home
Economics, body measurements of 100,-
000 children to serve as a basis for this
undertaking have already been started.
Cancer
leadership has come into the
field of cancer research through the
action of Congress in establishing a Na-
tional Cancer Institute in the Public
Health Service. The bill, first sponsored
by Senator Bone of Washington, at this
writing awaits the confidently expected
signature of the President. It authorizes
$750,000 for a building to house the in-
stitute and provides $700,000 a year for
research.
The institute will be guided by a na-
tional advisory council of six doctors and
scientists with the U. S. Surgeon General
as ex-officio chairman. This council is di-
rected to review research projects or
programs submitted to or initiated by it
relating to the study of the cause, pre-
vention or methods of diagnosis of can-
cer; to collect information as to studies
carried on anywhere in the same field;
to review applications from any university,
hospital, laboratory or other institution,
whether public or private for grants in
aid of research projects.
The Surgeon General is authorized to
buy radium for use of the institute, or
for lending to scientists engaged in can-
cer research.
Essential Facts — The comprehensive
article, Cancer, the Great Darkness,
published in the magazine Fortune in
March 1937, has been issued as an eighty-
page book by Doubleday, Doran and
Co., New York publishers, to retail at
$1 a copy. Quantity orders at a reduced
price may be placed through the Amer-
ican Society for the Control of Cancer,
1250 Sixth Avenue, New York.
Sinews of Research — Resources for
research into the cause and cure of can-
cer practically have been doubled by the
recent gift by Starling W. Childs, New
York investment banker, of $10 million to
Yale University to establish the Jane
Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Scien-
tific Research. The gift is the largest ever
made to Yale for research. The income,
said President Angell, will be "devoted
primarily to medical research into the
causes and origins of cancer with the pro-
vision that when, in the judgment of the
board of managers, the causes and origins
of this dread disease have been sufficient-
ly determined, the fund may thereafter
... be devoted to research into some
other unsolved problem of medicine. . . ."
Under the deed of gift the fund will be
administered by a board of managers
advised by a scientific board. This latter,
already appointed, includes Drs. Stan-
hope Bayne-Jones, Rudolph J. Anderson,
Ross G. Harrison and Milton C. Winter-
nitz, all of Yale and Dr. Peyton Rous of
the Rockefeller Institute.
Prior to this new fund the largest en-
dowment specifically for cancer research
has been the $2 million of the Interna-
tional Cancer Research Foundation of
Philadelphia; next to that the $1,140,000
of the Crocker Cancer Research Fund.
New Hospital — Ground has been
broken for the new twelve-story building
of the Memorial Hospital for the Treat-
ment of Cancer and Allied Diseases, New
York. The building, to cost upwards of
$3,500,000, adjoins the extensive plants of
the Rockefeller Institute, New York
Hospital and Cornell University Medical
College with which Memorial is affili-
ated. It was made possible by a grant of
$3 million last year by the General Edu-
cation Board, plus the gift of the site by
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The new hos-
pital will provide 160 beds at the outset,
with provision for large expansion.
Women's Army— Some 78,000 new
members have been enrolled recently in
the Women's Field Army of the Amer-
ican Society for the Control of Cancer
and about $104,000, much of it repre-
senting dollar enlistments, has been raised
to prosecute the campaign against the
disease. It is estimated that several times
the number of new members have been
exposed, by reason of the campaign, to
facts about early diagnosis. The Women's
Field Army, of which Marjorie B. Illig
of Massachusetts is national commander,
conducts its campaign with the aid of
cancer committees of state medicii so-
cieties and some 1500 local women
"officers."
The Public's Health
QRGANIZATION of the staff is
^"^ under way for New York's great
new hospital, dedicated to the care and
treatment of persons suffering from
chronic diseases, a field long neglected in
New York as elsewhere. The building,
now a vast steel skeleton on the lower
end of Welfare Island where the old
city prison once stood, will have 1600
beds, will cost with equipment upwards
of $8 million, and will be completed the
end of next year. By affiliation between
the City Department of Hospitals and
the medical schools of Columbia, Cornell
and New York Universities it will be
organized as a teaching and research
center. The medical staff will have three
divisions of equal rank, one from each
of the affiliated medical colleges.
Red Gross Byways — The Swedish
Red Cross, supplementing a government
grant, has donated money and under-
taken distribution of fruit to children in
North Sweden, to combat with vitamins
the harmful effects of the long winter
darkness. . . . Disinfection units were
sent out during the past year by the
Polish Red Cross Society to border prov-
inces where sanitary conditions were re-
ported to be defective. Ninety small
towns and villages were cleaned up,
16,000 houses disinfected and nearly
100,000 inhabitants treated to shower
baths. . . . The Central Committee of
the French Red Cross and the National
Union of Touring Associations collabo-
rate in the organization of highway first-
aid posts, the latter responsible for the
equipment of posts and the former for
the training of personnel. ... A travel-
ing trailer-laboratory did yeoman service
260
for the Red Cross, during the Ohio and
Mississippi Valley floods last winter.
With a U. S. Public Health Service sur-
geon in charge it moved rapidly from
place to place supplying laboratory ser-
vice in answer to emergency calls from
many doctors otherwise stranded as to
such service.
Still a Killer — In answer to the ques-
tion, "Has the decline in the death rate
from tuberculosis been stopped?" the
Bulletin of the Metropolitan Life Insur-
ance Company supplies provisional 1936
mortality figures for tuberculosis from
forty states. Of these nineteen reported
mortality rates higher than in 1935,
and nineteen reported lower. Two
showed no change. When final figures
are compiled, the margin of increase or
decrease over 1935 is sure to be small.
Commenting on future tuberculosis
mortality Dr. Esmond R. Long of the
Henry Phipps Institute, Philadelphia, and
last year's president of the National Tu-
berculosis Association warns: "There is
first the great problem of case-finding —
if 65,000 deaths occur this year, it means
there are some 600,000 cases. We can-
not say accurately how many of these
cases are open and likely to progress, but
a figure of 200,000 is probably not far
from the truth. Possibly half of these
cases are known at the present time, and
under some sort of supervision. . . .
But a considerable mortality from tu-
berculosis will continue for a decade or
more from the present known and un-
known cases. In addition to the deaths
from this source there will be tuberculo-
sis mortality from those whose disease is
not now active, and from a not incon-
siderable number who are not yet dis-
eased at all. Our greatest hope for the
future lies in what we can do for the
last two groups."
Russia Fights VD— A sharp decrease
in venereal disease in Russia during the
past seven years was reported at the re-
cent fourth Soviet Union Congress on
Skin and Venereal Disease, says the Mos-
cow correspondent of the Journal of the
American Medical Association. The con-
gress discussed measures for achieving
the conquest of syphilis in villages and
national districts where lack of element-
ary sanitary and medical measures for-
merly made the infection general, and for
complete eradication of congenital syphi-
lis. In all medical colleges special de-
partments to study gonorrhea will be
established. During 1937-38 all gyne-
cologists are to attend special courses to
keep abreast of recent developments in
the treatment of venereal diseases.
TB in the GGG — In three and one-
half years of CCC camps operation 1.11
per 1,000 men or 1088 in all were re-
ported by camp surgeons as having tu-
berculosis. These low figures were not
accepted without question by the Sur-
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
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VOU can relieve even the
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The answer is quick and sim-
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almost instantly this way:
Take — two teaspoonfuls of Phil-
lips' Milk of Magnesia 30 min-
utes after meals. Or, take two
Phillips' Milk of Magnesia Tab-
lets, each of which contains the
equivalent of a teaspoonful of
the liquid form.
Try this method. Get a bottle
of the liquid Phillips' for home
use. A box of the Phillips' tab-
lets that you can carry with
you in pocket or purse —
only 25<" for a big box.
Watch out that any you
accept is clearly labeled
"Phillips' Milk of Magnesia."
PHILLIPS
MILK OF MAGNESIA
MERCUROCHROME, H.W. & D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodium)
After a thorough Investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
11935)
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Requesf
HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md.
geon-General of the Army as "opportuni-
ties of the camp surgeons for observation
and examination were limited." At Camp
Dix, N. J., where during the fall of
1935 applicants for enrollment were given
routine X-ray examination, 73 cases per
1000 white men and 55 per 1000 colored
were found. About three-fourths of the
cases were classified as inactive and the
rest definitely active or suspect.
Line of March — A special survey of
all the births in Denver, Colo., over a
twelve-month period has been made by
the Bureau of Research of the Univers-
ity of Denver, cooperating with the Den-
ver Public Health Council and the Visit-
ing Nurse Association. A social and
medical history of each case was ob-
tained. The data are being analyzed un-
der a grant from the Milbank Memorial
Fund, and with the assistance of the
fund's technical staff. Collaborating in
the work are Dorothy G. Wiehl of the
fund; Dorothy Watkins Conrad, for-
merly of the Denver Visiting Nurse As-
sociation and Dr. A. D. H. Kaplan,
director of social studies of the university.
... At the request of the New York
Association for Improving the Condition
of the Poor, Jean Downes of the Mil-
bank Memorial Fund will advise on the
scientific aspects of a study and evalua-
tion of results of a special tuberculosis
control program in the Mulberry Health
Center district, New York City. . . . The
American Medical Association and the
United States Public Health Service
have joined forces to produce a talking
motion picture "clinic" on syphilis. Copies
will be made available to state and
county medical societies, hospital confer-
ences and other assemblages. ... A new
Michigan law requires both applicants
for a marriage license to present health
certificates signed by competent physicians.
Against Crime
THE population of federal penal and
correctional institutions is this year
at an all-time high. About 16,000 men
are confined in institutions and nearly
25,000 more are under probation.
What and Where — Of all offenses
known to the police during 1936, 95.1
percent were crimes against property;
4.9 percent were crimes against the per-
son. The compilation of statistics pub-
lished by the Department of Justice as
Uniform Crime Reports for the United
States and Its Possessions indicates that
In answering advertisements please mtntion SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
261
for most types of offenses New England
has the lowest rate of any section of the
country. The highest murder rate for
any state is that of Georgia ; the lowest,
New Hampshire. Arizona has the high-
est rate for rape, with South Dakota and
Michigan close behind ; Rhode Island
has the lowest. Robbery runs highest in
Tennessee and Illinois; lowest in New
Hampshire. Burglary is highest in Flor-
ida and Georgia and lowest in Vermont
and Wisconsin. Automobile theft is high-
est in Arizona, lowest in New Hamp-
shire.
England Learns - "The more hu-
mane prison administration has become
the lower has become the number of
habitual criminals," said Sir Samuel
Hoare, English Home Secretary, to the
House of Commons. The facts, he added,
are convincing. Twenty-five years ago
there were fifty-six local prisons in Eng-
land with an average population of
20,000; today there are twenty-six pris-
ons with a population of about 10,000,
and this in spite of a great increase in
population and the social disruption con-
sequent to the war and its aftermath.
New reforms which Sir Samuel pro-
poses are based on results of experiments
in the "model" prison at Wakefield.
Here it has been demonstrated effectively
that prisoners respond and develop bet-
ter if from the first they are given cer-
tain privileges hitherto reserved for
"good behavior." The possibility of los-
ing privileges by bad behavior is more
effective than the possibility of earning
them by good behavior. The training
school for wardens, first tried at Wake-
field, is to be extended, also the system
of paying prisoners a small wage for
their work and permitting them to spend
it as they choose.
Career Men — The Central Guard
School of the New York State Depart-
ment of Correction has graduated its
first class of 240 young "career men"
whose special training began last No-
vember at Walkill Prison. The men go
into $1800 a year jobs under the eight-
hour day system for guards, instituted in
July. In addressing the graduates Gov-
ernor Herbert H. Lehman reminded
them that they represented a new at-
tempt to reduce crime by "common sense,
science and study," and promised that it
would be from among them and from
succeeding classes that the future war-
dens and top officials of the state's cor-
rectional institutions would be chosen.
Bit by Bit — Week-end sentences for
misdemeanants will be tried out in Roch-
ester, N. Y., under the terms of a bill
passed by the recent legislature. Sentences
up to sixty days of persons convicted of
misdemeanors may be served over suc-
cessive week ends, as many as may be
necessary, thus making it possible for the
offender to do his time without loss of
his job. A similar bill, state-wide in cov-
erage, was vetoed last year by Governor
Lehman. The scheme "ill now be tried
out in Rochester.
So What — -District Judge Harry D.
Landis of Seward, Neb., and his law-
student son had themselves incarcerated
in the state penitentiary for three weeks
recently to get a look at prison and pris-
oners at close range. The Judge was
assigned to work in the kitchen and chair
factory, his son to digging and loading
clay. They learned that their fellow pris-
oners were most interested, if their talk
was any indication, in crime, in new and
sensational "jobs" and in sports.
What Is Needed — Four important
modifications in Pennsylvania's penal sys-
tem are necessary to make effective the
present theory of penal treatment in in-
stitutions and on parole, said John D.
Pennington to Governor Earle as he
prepared to retire as state secretary of
welfare. The modifications are: central-
ized control of state owned penal insti-
tutions; coordination of prison and parole
services; a central classification system
within the Department of Welfare, and
the establishment of a merit system and
training school. "An effective parole sys-
tem," said Mr. Pennington, "should be-
gin its activities not at the moment of re-
lease on parole but from the moment of
sentence and incarceration."
States Act — During the past open sea-
son for legislatures nearly thirty states
approved one or more of the four uni-
form bills drafted by the Interstate Com-
mission on Crime. These bills cover the
The Ice Pack Breaks Up
The official Social Hygiene Day poster used
for publicity purposes both before and
after that special occasion. Made from a
cartoon by C. D. Batchelor of the New
York Daily News.
pursuit of criminals across state borders,
the extradition of criminals, the removal
of out of state witnesses and the recip-
rocal supervision of paroled persons.
Three states, Oklahoma, New Mexico
and Georgia made kidnapping a capital
offense, and three others, South Caro-
lina, Connecticut and Colorado, made it
a capital offense if the victim is harmed.
Juveniles — The national survey of ju-
venile institutions, discussed for some
time by The Osborne Association, Inc.,
114 East 30 Street, New York, is
finally under way, directed by F. Lovell
Bixby, recently with the U. S. Bureau of
Prisons. He will be assisted by an ad-
visory committee of specialists in child
welfare and juvenile delinquency. The
study will proceed by groups of states,
with the reports published as rapidly as
they are completed.
On account of the decrease in the num-
ber of girls committed to institutions by
the children's courts of New York, the
Council Home for Jewish Girls, main-
tained in Brooklyn by the local branch
of the Council of Jewish Women, has
closed its doors. It was established some
twenty-three years ago. In 1929 the
children's courts of the city committed
882 girls to special institutions of the
three religious faiths. In 1936 the num-
ber had fallen to 168, of whom only
sixteen were Jewish.
The PIRA — Close to two years after
it was created by executive order of the
President the Prison Industries Reorgan-
ization Administration has issued a com-
prehensive report covering its activities
and accomplishments. The administra-
tion has been approached by seventeen
states and the District of Columbia for
surveys and recommendations on their
prison systems. In some states its recom-
mendations have been followed by vigor-
ous legislative action; in others they are
blocked for lack of understanding and
support. In addition to its work directly
with the states the PIRA has made a
great number of special studies: on legal
aspects of prison industries, on indus-
tries suitable for prisons, on probation
and parole systems and on educational
work in prisons. The whole experience
of the PIRA indicates, it says, a great
need of disinterested advice and leader-
ship in the prison field and willingness
on the part of the states to accept leader-
ship from an appropriate federal au-
thority.
Wise Veto' — The veto by Governor
Horner of Illinois of the Ward-Snacken-
burg bill, requiring trial judges to set
minimum and maximum terms in statu-
tory and indeterminate sentences, is hailed
by penologists and civic and social or-
ganizations as having "saved Illinois from
a backward step." The measure practi-
cally would have destroyed the parole
262
system. The bill, with powerful political
backing, had the "inflexible opposition"
of the Chicago Crime Commission and a
great number of other influential bodies
as well as of individuals. In his veto mes-
sage, recommended as a "state paper"
by Graham Taylor, Governor Horner
reviewed ably the problems inherent in
effective administration of parole and ex-
pressed himself as ". . . opposed to the
repeal of the parole system piecemeal or
in toto. Notwithstanding the hue and cry
of the moment it has proved its worth
throughout the nation."
While thoughtful Illinoisans rejoiced
at the governor's veto of the bill which
represented a backward step, they de-
plored the defeat in the state senate of the
Adamowski bill which represented a for-
ward step. This bill, passed by a large
majority in the house, provided for a
non-political, full-time, paid parole board
with staggered terms of fourteen years.
Professional
A RETIREMENT plan for all em-
ployes of the New York State
Charities Aid Association went into effect
in July, by arrangement with the Teach-
ers Insurance and Annuity Association of
America. Participation is compulsory for
all employes thirty-five or more years of
age who have been employed by the Asso-
ciation two years or more. Each employe
contributes 5 percent of his salary toward
an annuity, with an equal contribution
made by the Association which also is
making a substantial contribution at the
outset in recognition of previous services
of employes. Retirement age is fixed at
sixty-five. In its practical workings an
employe, retiring at sixty-five after thirty
years service, will receive a life annuity
of approximately 40 percent of his salary.
A general review of accumulated ex-
perience in retirement planning in private
social agencies will be found in the June
issue of The Compass, organ of the
American Association of Social Workers,
130 East 22 Street, New York. The re-
view is by Helen I. Fisk, statistician of
the New York Charity Organization
Society.
Nurses Win — July 1 was a bonfire
day for employes of New York's muni-
cipal hospitals, for on that date the long
fought for eight-hour day for nurses, at-
tendants and household help, became
effective. Exempt from the order, which
involved a budget increase of $1,500,000,
were administrative officers, physicians
and superintendents of nurses. The
nurses, several hundred strong, celebrated
the victory with a seven-o'clock break-
fast at the Tavern on the Green, in
Central Park, with Mayor LaGuardia
as the chief congratulator.
The eight-hour day means the addition
o the payroll of the city Department of
In
Social
Group Work
Department
Fall Semester begins Sept. 29th
Temple University through the Teachers College now
offers a two-year graduate course in the field of
SOCIAL GROUP WORK
Designed to prepare for work in such organizations as
Social Settlements Church Social Centers
Y.M. & Y.W.C.A. Scouts, Camp Fire, Pioneer Youth
Y.M. & Y.W.H.A. Community Centers
Governmental Leisure Time Programs
Catalog on request
LE UNIVERSITY
Broad Street & Montgomery Avenue
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Horace H. Rackham
School of Graduate Studies
Curriculum in Social Work
Two year course leading to the degree of Master of Social Work. Open
only to college graduates with background in the Social Sciences.
Registration, fall semester, September 23-25, 1937.
For further information address:
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
40 East Ferry Street Detroit, Mich.
Hospitals of 1281 graduate nurses, 349
attendants or nurses' aides and 1163 per-
sons in other categories. The WPA sup-
plied 151 applications for the new nurs-
ing jobs; the National Reemployment
Service, 130. In its efforts to recruit the
new nursing personnel the department
communicated with 1400 schools of nurs-
ing throughout the country, advertised
in all nursing publications and sent speak-
ers to all sorts of meetings of nurses.
Coming Events — The American Pub-
lic Health Association is deep in prepara-
tion for its annual meeting, "the assem-
bly of the nation's health authorities," to
be held in New York, October 5-8. The
opening general session will find Surgeon
General Thomas Parran, Mayor La-
Guardia, Governor Herbert H. Lehman
and Dr. Livingston Farrand on the plat-
form. Special sessions on mental hygiene,
the hygiene of housing and the advance
of public health, are on the program, as
well as a great number of inspection
trips to official and non-official health
agencies. The American Association of
School Physicians and the National Or-
ganization for Public Health Nursing
will join in a series of scientific sessions.
An intensive three day institute on public
health education, directed by Prof. Ira V.
advcrtisf infills please mention Srnviy MIDMOXTHLY
Hiscock of Yale University, will precede
the meeting.
Plans are making under the aegis of
the National Health Council for an inter-
national health congress to be held dur-
ing the New York World's Fair in 1939.
The last congress of the kind was held in
Atlantic City in 1926. Plans for 1939 are
being developed by the Council in collab-
oration with the World's Fair Advisory
Committee on Medicine and Public
Health, headed by Dr. Louis I. Dublin.
The American Hospital Association is
planning as a feature of its annual meet-
ing in Atlantic City, September 13-17,
a "court" to try the case of "Disturbing
Conditions vs. Correct Procedure." A
panel of "jurors," experts on various
phases of maintainance, will decide cases
brought before them by means of a ques-
tion box in which "plaintiffs" may file
their charges.
People and Things
DERSONNEL news of the month in
this department's bailiwick, is the ap-
pointment of Charlotte E. Carr of New
York as head resident of Hull-House,
.. Chicago, a post held
in the interval since
Jane Addams' death
by Mrs. Kenneth Rich
as a volunteer. Miss
Carr's resignation as
director of the New
York City Emerg-
ency Relief Bureau
became effective on
August 1. She will
G. Maillard Kesslci
CHARLOTTE CARR on October 1. Miss
Carr has been in the forefront of social
and industrial work ever since she was
graduated from Vassar in 1915. She was
for a number of years associated with
Frances Perkins in the New York State
Labor Department and was secretary of
labor and industry of the state of Penn-
sylvania during the administration of
Governor Pinchot. She entered the New
York relief administration in one of its
stormiest periods, following an alder-
manic investigation. In spite of heavy
pressures from all sides she consistently
has stood her ground to maintain relief
standards in the city and to keep relief
administration free from politics. Dur-
ing the past year she has affected almost
a complete reorganization of the ERB
in preparation for the transfer of its
functions later in the year to the De-
partment of Public Welfare.
New Jobs for Old— The Russell
Sage Foundation has elected Lawson
Purdy as its president, thus filling a chair
vacant since the death of Robert W. de
Forest. Mr. Purdy has been for several
years vice-president and treasurer, dual
responsibilities to which Morris Hadley
now succeeds.
Paul Webbink, for more than a year
on the staff of the committee on social
security of the Social Science Research
Council, has been made director of the
committee, succeeding J. Frederic Dew-
hurst, resigned.
Josephine C. Brown, who from the be-
ginning, has been associated with the ad-
ministration of WPA and its forerunner,
FERA, has resigned and is taking a long
rest abroad. On her return she will wind
up some WPA studies in which she was
greatly interested and after that perhaps
rest some more.
New Editor— Social Work Today has
added to its staff a full-time managing
editor, Frank C. Bancroft, recently with
the U. S. Employment Service at Cin-
cinnati. Mr. Bancroft, who has contrib-
uted articles to Social Work Today and
to The Survey, has had a wide experi-
ence in social and religious work and
tried his hand at journalism for six
months as editor of The People's Voice,
a Democratic newspaper in Cincinnati.
Distinguished Exile — Newspaper re-
ports from abroad confirm the rumor,
current for some weeks, that Alice Salo-
mon, dean of German social workers, has
been expelled from her native country.
Miss Salomon was in the United States
last winter lecturing under the auspices
of the American Association of Schools
of Social Work. Some three months after
her return to Germany she was subjected
to rigorous official examination, the up-
shot being that she was obliged to leave
Germany within three weeks, for the os-
tensible reason that she had overstayed
her time in the United States. She is
now with friends in England but expects
to come here in the fall.
Alice Salomon has been an international
figure in social work for many years. Her
writings include some twenty volumes on
sociological subjects. She organized the
first school of social work in Germany
and was its director until 1925. Under
both the empire and the republic she was
paid high official honors for her work in
public health, her studies of women and
children in industry and her leadership
in progressive social work.
At the Colleges— The Smith College
School of Social Work has a galaxy of
social work stars as lecturers for its sum-
mer session. The course, specialized psy-
chiatric social work, requires two winters
of field work and three sessions of the
summer school. Visiting lecturers during
the current session include, Grace Mar-
cus of the New York COS, Abraham
Epstein of the American Association for
Social Security, Florence Day of the
Family Welfare Association of America,
Dorothy C. Kahn of the Philadelphia
County Relief Board, Frederick Allen of
the All Philadelphia Child Guidance
Clinic and Irene Liggett of the Pennsyl-
vania Children's Aid.
A new department of social welfare
has been created at the University of
Utah, Salt Lake City, to provide pro-
fessional training in social case work.
Present plans call for a two-year course
which may be taken by senior students.
Arthur L. Beeley, since 1927 professor
of sociology at the university, is in charge.
The much regretted retirement of
William H. Kilpatrick from the chair of
philosophy of education at Teachers Col-
lege, Columbia University, is not by any
means a retirement from teaching. Pro-
fessor Kilpatrick will be at Northwestern
University, Evanston, 111. this fall, teach-
ing the philosophy of education.
The School of Social Work at the Uni-
versity of Buffalo, lately accepted as a
member of the American Association of
Schools of Social Work, has a new mem-
ber of its faculty in Clarence M. Pierce,
assistant professor of public welfare and
public administration. . . . The Univer-
sity of Chicago has reclaimed Leonard
D. White, professor of political science,
who for the past three years has been on
leave of absence as a member of the fed-
eral civil service commission.
In Memory — A scholarship loan fund
of $10,000 is being raised as a memorial
to James E. Tunnell, Jr., George O. Mil-
liken and Carlos di Dio, members of the
staff of the Denver City Welfare Bureau
who were killed last winter while on
duty. The fund will be given to the Uni-
versity of Denver School of Social Work.
Contributions are being received by Leo
E. Steinhardt, International Trust Com-
pany, Seventeenth and California Street,
Denver.
Friends of the late George B. Neu-
mann and Stephen C. Clement, long ac-
tive in social and civic affairs in Buffalo,
are raising a fund to establish as a mem-
orial to them an annual Neumann-Clem-
ent Day with distinguished speakers at
public gatherings. Prof. Niles Carpenter
of the University of Buffalo and Paul L.
Benjamin of the Council of Social Agen-
cies are among the trustees.
Honors — In dedicating the new Lillian
D. Wald Playground in the heart of New
York's east side, Mayor LaGuardia said,
"The city could pay no tribute that she
would appreciate more than something
living, something useful, something that
the children of the neighborhood could
enjoy." The Lillian D. Wald Playground,
which includes a pool and many other
modern facilities, is only two blocks from
Henry Street Settlement. Miss Wald was
unable to leave her home in Westport,
Conn., for the ceremonies opening the
playground but listened on the radio.
The twenty-third Spingarn medal for
distinguished achievement by an Ameri-
can Negro has been awarded to Walter
White, secretary of the National Associa-
264
THE SURVEY
tion for the Advancement of Colored
People. The citation, prepared by a com-
mittee headed by Oswald Garrison Vil-
lard, mentioned particularly Mr. White's
"tact, skill and persuasiveness" in connec-
tion with federal anti-lynching legisla-
tion.
All the neighbors for blocks around
descended on the Jewish Day Nursery
and Neighborhood House in Newark,
N. J. one June Sunday to celebrate the
completion of Josephine Miller's twenty-
fifth year as headworker. A luncheon
by the trustees and a surprise party by
the Mothers' Club were added events in
the celebration.
The Strittmatter Award of the Phila-
delphia County Medical Society went
this year to Dr. William G. Turnbull,
since 1928 superintendent of the Phila-
delphia General Hospital, as the physi-
cian who "has made the most valuable
contribution to the healing art."
Public Service — New state commis-
sioner of social welfare in Florida, suc-
ceeding Conrad Van Hyning, is Clayton
C. Codrington, newspaper publisher of
Lake City. Mr. Codrington was chair-
man of the state Democratic Campaign
Committee in 1936 and managed Gov-
ernor Cone's successful gubernatorial
campaign last fall. Appointed postmaster
at Lake City last February he resigned
to accept his present post.
T. E. Whitaker has been appointed
commissioner of labor in Georgia, a new
position created by the last legislature.
Mr. Whitaker, a union man with long
experience in labor relations, will have
administrative direction of the Work-
men's Compensation Board, unemploy-
ment compensation, the state employment
service, and general supervision of fac-
tory inspection and conciliation. . . . Paul
Sifton, a newspaper man who came into
the New York State Department of
Labor several years ago by way of civil
service, has been appointed deputy in-
dustrial commissioner.
Only a year ago the Social Work
Publicity Council was running up the flag
for a new executive secretary, Edna T.
Kerr of New Jersey. Now it is reluctant-
ly pulling it down again. Mrs. Kerr has
"gone public," her new job being field
examiner attached to the New York
regional office of the National Labor Re-
lations Board.
James L. Houghteling, formerly an
executive of the Chicago Daily News,
has been appointed U.S. Commissioner
of Emigration succeeding the late Col.
Daniel W. MacCormack.
M.D.s and R.N.s — New executive
secretary of the Illinois State Nurses
Association is Madeleine McConnell, re-
cently instructor at the Yale School of
Nursing and with a long record of pro-
fessional and educational experience go-
ing back to her graduation from St.
Luke's Hospital School of Nursing, Chi-
cago. . . . Lucy H. Beal of the Memorial
Hospital, Syracuse, N. Y. is the new prin-
cipal of the school and director of nurs-
ing at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital,
Boston, succeeding Carrie M. Hall.
Dr. Edwin B. Godfrey of San Bernar-
dino, Calif., has been appointed state
health officer of New Mexico, succeeding
Dr. John Rosslyn Earp who has been
stepped up to state director of health. . . .
New director of Roosevelt Hospital, New
York, is Dr. Joe R. Clemmons, recently
assistant director at Strong Memorial
Hospital, Rochester.
The U. S. Children's Bureau has re-
cently lost Dr. Albert McCown, director
of its maternal and, child health division,
who, under a Rockefeller Foundation fel-
lowship, is engaging in advanced study in
public health at Johns Hopkins. Pro-
moted to his post at the bureau is Dr.
Edwin F. Dailey who has been assistant
director for the past year.
Effie June Taylor, dean of the Yale
University School of Nursing, was elected
president of the International Congress
of Nurses at its meeting last month in
London.
Earned Leisure — The latest addition
to the small and honorable company of
Russell Sage Foundation alumni is Lee
F. Hanmer who last month retired from
the staff after an as-
sociation which be-
gan in 1907, the year
the foundation was
incorporated. M r .
Hanmer joined the
RSF by way of its
Playground Exten-
sion Committee from
which developed by
slow stages its De-
partment of Recrea-
tion formed in 1912
with Mr. Hanmer as
its director. Practi-
cally every important movement in the
field of recreation has at one stage or
another of its growth been helped or
steered by Mr. Hanmer's department.
He leaves his desk for his farm, Merry-
lea in Gardiner, N. Y. — which, to any-
one brought up on a farm, does not
sound like a life of leisure.
After thirty-five years in social work,
the last sixteen of them as executive di-
rector of the Pittsburgh Federation of
Jewish Philanthropies, Ludwig B. Bern-
stein is retiring. Board and staff gave
him a fine send-off in the form of a din-
ner, complete with speeches and gifts.
Mr. Bernstein is spending the rest of the
year abroad. On his return he will re-
sume teaching at the University of Pitts-
burgh.
The Clergy— The Rev. Walter An-
drew Foery, director of Catholic Chari-
ties of the Diocese of Rochester, N. Y.,
Kaiden-Keystone
LEE HANMER
and vice president of the Rochester Coun-
cil of Social Agencies, has been named
Bishop of Syracuse, his consecration to
take place in August. . . . The Rev. Larry
T. Hosie has left the pastorate of the
Judson Memorial Baptist Church, New
York, to accept appointment as industrial
secretary of the Fellowship of Reconcilia-
tion, succeeding A. J. Muste. . . . New
executive of the St. Louis Metropolitan
Church Federation, now reorganizing its
program of cooperation on a district
basis, is the Rev. Clark Walter Cum-
mings, recently of Springfield, 111. . . .
After five years with the Maryland and
Delaware Council of Churches the Rev.
W. Ross Sanderson will go to Buffalo in
September as executive of the Council of
Churches.
Deaths
ETHEL C. TAYLOR, on the faculty of the
New York School of Social Work since
1930. suddenly, in mid-July, at her
family home in Newark, N. J. Only two
days before her death Miss Taylor had
met her classes at the school where she
was carrying a full schedule of work.
Only a week before she had accepted
executive responsibility for the social
workers' committee to aid Spanish refu-
gee children, this in the absence of the
committee's officers during the summer
months. Miss Taylor had broad inter-
ests and deep concern with human rela-
tions. Though questions of health had
compelled her of late to plan her activi-
ties carefully and to concentrate her
energy where it was most important, her
vital interest in life and work and her
great courage kept her from any sense of
limitation.
Before joining the faculty of the New
York School Miss Taylor was succes-
sively with Intercollegiate Bureau of Oc-
cupations, the Westchester County, N. Y.
Department of Child Welfare, the Chil-
dren's Bureau, the Philadelphia, Chil-
dren's Bureau, the pediatrics section of
the Associated Out-Patient Clinics, the
Child Welfare League of America and
the New York Charity Organization So-
ciety. She was a graduate of Goucher
College and had recently received her
M.A. from Columbia University. She
never ceased to be a student and was
always a real teacher. The work of her
students, whether they had her guidance
in the classroom or in the field, is the
extension of her life. L. A. Q.
THOMAS HANCOCK NUNN, one of the
founders of Toynfoee House, London,
credited with the initiation and promo-
tion of "more reforms than can be at-
tributed to any other voluntary social
worker" in England.
THE REV. GEORGE F. CLOVER, since 1900
the superintendent of St. Luke's Hospi-
tal, New York.
AUGUST 1937
2fiS
Professional
CIVIL SERVICE TESTING FOR SOCIAL
WORK POSITIONS, by Lewis Meriam.
The Civil Service Assembly of the U.S. and
Canada. 850 East 58 Street, Chicago. 6 pp.
Price 25 cents.
A condensation of the author's paper at
the National Conference of Social Work
in which he appraises the usefulness of
various devices revealing evidence of skill.
PRACTICAL METHODS FOR IDENTIFY-
ING PUBLIC OPINION, by Harwood L.
Childs. Price 25 cents from the Social Work
Publicity Council, 130 East 22 Street, New
York City.
A discussion of the developing science
of identifying public opinion, as a means
by which social work publicity may avoid
"talking to itself."
PLAY STREETS AND THEIR USE FOR
RECREATIONAL PROGRAMS, by Edward
V. Norton. A. S. Barnes and Co. New York
1937. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
A description of the activities of the
children and the socializing effect of or-
ganized and supervised street play.
SOCIAL GROUP WORK, by Neva L. Boyd.
Division of Social Work of the University
College, Northwestern University, Chicago.
12 pp. Price 20 cents, less in quantity.
Described by the author as lia definition
with a methodological note."
SELECTED LIST OF PUBLICATIONS. Is-
sued by the Social Security Board. Wash-
ington, D. C. Information Service, Louis
Resnick, director. Publication No. 12. Free.
Concerning Children
STATE ADMINISTRATION OF CHILD
WELFARE IN ILLINOIS, by Elizabeth
Hayward Milchrist. The University of Chi-
cago Press. 130 pp. Price 75 cents.
A compact, well documented record of
Illinois' gradual extension of concern for
the welfare of children.
THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD IX ILLI-
NOIS, by Dorotiy Frances Puttee and Mary
Ruth Colby. Edited by Sophonisba P. Breck-
enridge. The University of Chicago Press.
250 pp. Price $1.25.
Although the field work for this study
was done some years ago, the situation it
records is apparently little changed. The
law and its interpretation are brought
down to date.
THE CHILDREN'S BUREAU: YESTERDAY,
TODAY AND TOMORROW. Published by the
U.S. Children's Bureau. 57 pp. Price 10
cents from the Superintendent of Documents,
Washington, D. C.
The story of the Children's Bureau, en-
tertainly written and attractively illus-
trated, with a list of members of various
advisory committees and of representative
publications.
CHILD MANAGEMENT, by D. A. Thorn,
M.D. Children's Bureau Publication, No.
143. 107 pp. Price 10 cents from the Super-
intendent of Documents, Washington, D. C.
The revision of an earlier publication
which has had a large circulation among
parents, teachers, nurses and study groups.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF THE
EXCEPTIONAL CHILD. 63 pp. Single
copies on request from Child Research
Clinic, The Woods School, Langhorne, Pa.
Proceedings of the second conference on
education and the exceptional child held
under the auspices of the Child Research
THE PAMPHLET SHELF
Clinic of The Woods Schools. Includes
papers by Judge Theodore Rosen, Dr.
Elton Mayo, Dr. Cecile White Flemming,
Rose N. Alschuler, David Segal and others.
Against Crime
CRIME TREATMENT IN NEW JERSEY,
1068-1934, b- Emil Frankel. Reprint from
the Journal of Criminal Law and Crimin-
ology. 18 pp. From the author, Department
of Institutions and Agencies, Trenton, N. J.
JUVENILE COURT STATISTICS. 1934
AND FEDERAL JUVENILE OFFEND-
ERS, 1935. "U.S. Children's Bureau Publica-
lion No. 235. 106 pn. Price 15 cents from
the Superintendent of Documents, Wash-
ington, D. C. .
JUVENILE COURT STANDARDS. U.S.
Children's Bureau Publication No. 121. 10
pp. Price 10 cents from the Superintendent
pp.
of
of Documents, Washington, D. C.
The report of a committee appointed in
1921, reprinted as the result of a confer-
ence under the auspices of the Children's
Bureau and the National Probation Asso-
ciation.
THE STATE AND CRIME PREVENTION.
by E. R. Cass. Published by the Prison
Association of New York, 135 East 15 Street,
New York City. Free.
Address given before the last meeting
of the New York State Conference on
Social Work.
PROCEDURES FOR DEALING WITH
WAYWARD MINORS IN NEW YORK
CITY, by Anna M. Kross prepared with the
aid of WPA for the City of New York.
A thorough going-over of the past, pres-
ent and hoped-for future of methods of
procedure in handling child offenders by a
city magistrate.
People
THE PEOPLE OF THE DROUGHT
STATES, prepared by Conrad Taeuber,
Carl C. Taylor and others for the division
of social research, Works Progress Admin-
istration, and other federal agencies. 81 pp.
The second of three bulletins dealing
with problems in the areas of intense
drought distress. It traces the uncontrolled
settlement of the area, the movement of
people within and out of it and their at-
tempts to adjust to the natural resources
it held. There is little evidence that the
movement out of the area is correcting
the difficulties occasioned by its rapid oc-
cupation or that the errors of original set-
tlement will not be repeated.
AND THEY WENT FORTH, by William
Thomson Hanzsche. published by the Board
of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian
Church in the U.S.A. 156 Fifth Avenue.
New York. Six booklets on Pioneering.
Preaching. Teaching, Healing, Reaping and
Tomorrow. Price $1 for the series, single
copies 20 cents.
These booklets, beautifully styled, cele-
brate a century of mission work by the
Presbyterian Church all over the world.
QUANTITY AND COST BUDGETS FOR:
FAMILY OF AN EXECUTIVE, FAMILY
OF A CLERK. FAMILY OF A WAGE
EARNER AND DEPENDENT FAM-
ILIES OR CHILDREN, by the Heller
Committee in Social Economics, University
of California, Berkeley, Calif. February
1937. Price 40 cents from the committee.
The purpose of these budgets is to "pre-
sent an estimate of the cost of living at
the various income levels at a particular
date and locality, and to measure the
changes in the cost of living from year to
year."
THE LIGHT OF HOPE, by Josephine \V.
Johnson. Written after observing the every-
day life of the Barnard Free Skin anil Can-
cer Hospital of St. Louis, Mo.
Josephine Johnson, Pulitzer Prize novel-
ist, describing in four sensitive sketches the
tragedies of human suffering from mortal
disease and of hospital waiting lists.
Concerning Health
PUBLIC WELFARE AND MEDICAL
CARE. American Public Welfare Associa-
tion, 850 East 58 Street, Chicago. Price 40
cents.
Two notable papers given at an APWA
meeting at the National Conference of So-
cial Work by Dr. Harvey Agnew of the
Canadian Medical Association and Dr.
Claude Worrell Munger, president of the
American Hospital Association. Included
is discussion by Dr. Ellen C. Potter of
New Jersey and Joseph L. Mass of Chicago.
HOSPITAL SERVICE IN THE UNITED
STATES. The 1936 Census of Hospitals.
Hospitals registered by the American Medi-
cal Association. Reprinted from the March
1937 number of the Journal of the Ameri-
can Medical Association. Price 50 cents from
The Council on Medical Education and Hos-
pitals of tlie American Medical Association,
535 North Dearborn Street, Chicago.
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL MEDICINE,
by Gertrude Kroeger. Introduction by
Michael M. Davis. The Julius Rosenwald
Fund. Chicago 1937.
Dr. Kroeger of the University of Ber-
lin has analyzed the thought of German
physician-scientists on the relationship
which social, technological and cultural
factors have on disease and medicine.
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL HYGIENE. A spe-
cial number on the Conference on Venereal
Disease Control Work. January 1937. Pub-
lished by the American Social Hygiene Asso-
ciation. 50 West 50 Street, New York. Price
35 cents from the association.
RELATION OF PUBLIC WELFARE TO
MEDICAL CARE AND INSTITUTIONS
A summary of discussions on the subject at
• the first annual round table conference in
Washington, D. C. December 1936. Ameri-
can Public Welfare Association, 850 East
58 Street, Chicago. Price 30 cents.
Views on the economical and efficient
administration of social security and
medicine.
Various and Sundry
STREET BEGGING IN ST. LOUIS. 50 pp.
NON-FAMILY BOYS ON RELIEF. 36
pp. Both published by the Bureau for Home-
less Men, St. Louis Mo.
A pair of studies, which, though local in
coverage, hold many implications for other
cities concerned with these two vexing
problems.
CHURCH AND STATE, by Ryllis Alexan-
der Goslin. Foreign Policy Association, 8
West 40 Street. New York. 46 pp. Price 25
cents.
Tenth in the FPA series of Headline
Books. After discussing the turmoil and
confusion that the war loosed on the world
Mrs. Goslin reviews, with her accustomed
economy of words and clarity of expres-
sion, the relation of church and state in
Russia, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and the
United States, with a brief commentary
on revolution and the church in Spain.
266
THE SURVEY
Readers Write
Points of Strategy
To THE EDITOR: The chief reason for
our failure to get state-wide merit sys-
tems lies, I believe, in the fact that we
have tried, in the main, to get them
through ordinary political channels. Such
efforts have been vain and will remain
vain, I fear, until our efforts are backed
by an organization of public opinion.
If we cannot look to our political par-
ties for the enactment of a civil service
measure, what is the remedy? It lies, I
believe, in the organization of non-par-
tisan bodies of citizens, bringing into
association all possible civic and pro-
gressive organizations to form a united
pressure on the legislators. But there is
one matter which must be considered
carefully at the outset. If a bill is to pass
and to remain on the statute books it
must be so drawn that it does not give
an undue advantage to the party that
happens to be in power. A bill should
require all present job holders to take
the same examination under the same
conditions as new candidates. A bill will
not gain general public support if it can
be interpreted as attempting to make
irremovable all persons then holding po-
sitions irrespective of their fitness and
qualifications.
Should the first bill apply to all de-
partments of the state government? This
is a matter of strategy. It must occur to
us that some governmental work is more
truly political than others and that the
work of caring for the fatherless chil-
dren, the aged, the blind, the sick, the
mentally diseased, the feeble-minded and
the delinquent should never in any sense
be considered as political. I submit
that a proposal to apply civil service to
the department of welfare will win more
ready support and arouse less opposition
than a proposal to apply it to the depart-
ment of highways. So it would appear to
be more feasible to seek a beginning in
one or two departments such as welfare
and public instruction than to endeavor
to enact a general civil service law.
PAUL N. SCHAEFFER
President, Pennsylvania Conference
on Social Work, Reading, Pa.
Back and Forth in Jersey
To THE EDITOR: A letter from the exe-
cutive secretary of the Long Branch,
X. J. Public Welfare Society in your
department Readers Write in the June
issue of The Survey gives an inaccurate
picture of public assistance in Mon-
mouth County, N. J.
There is difficulty in reconciling the
statement that "the local overseer (Long
Branch, N. J.) allows $27.30 for a de-
pendent single person" with the records
of the New Jersey Financial Assistance
Commission which makes grants in aid
to the local communities. According to
the report of that commission for April,
1937, grants by the overseer in Long
Branch averaged $18.75 per family or
$4.51 per person, and $12.35 per de-
pendent single person.
Statements that in Monmouth County
"really deserving old people are getting
average old age allowances of $16.38
monthly in winter, and around $13
monthly in summer" and that "even the
average of $16.38 monthly does not rep-
resent the situation fairly as the major-
ity of these old people are existing on
$12 to $14 monthly, with no other sources
of income or supplementary aid" are er-
roneous as is shown by the following.
In April, 1937, slightly more than 45
percent of total old age assistance clients
in Monmouth County were receiving
monthly payments of $20 or more. An-
other 40 percent were receiving from $15
to $19. More than 70 percent of the
county's aged clients live with legally
responsible relatives. The majority of the
latter receive only supplemental contribu-
tions from the public assistance funds to
aid sons and daughters, who are primar-
ily responsible, and who are in many
cases able to furnish basic support in the
form of cash, shelter, food, or some com-
bination of these.
When the statement is made that aged
persons under the care of the welfare
board in Monmouth County "are com-
pelled to pick up coal along railroad
tracks" and "to beg for cast-off clothing"
to supplement grants, and the question is
asked "What can be done about it?" we
should like to give assurance that the
County Welfare Board will be eager to
have the facts in any and all such cases
presented to it.
Failing satisfaction there, your cor-
respondent or any other interested person
will make valuable contribution to im-
provement of the service to aged persons
in this state if the circumstances are
referred for review to the State Division,
as provided in Chapter 31, Public Laws
of 1936, the New Jersey Old Age As-
sistance Act. MARC P. DOWDELL
Director, Division of Old Age Assistance,
Department of Institutions and Agencies
Trenton, N, J.
To THE EDITOR: Thank you for giving
me the opportunity to reply to Mr.
Dowdell's challenge of my earlier letter.
At the monthly meeting of the Mon-
mouth County Welfare Board on No-
vember 10, 1936, at which Mr. Dowdell
and I were guests, the county director of
the Old Age Assistance Bureau, said:
"The average old age allowance in Mon-
mouth County is $16.38 in winter, and
around $13 in summer," and added that
other counties in the state have even
lower averages. These figures were dis-
cussed with no question raised by Mr.
Dowdell. Since they were furnished by
the county official who authorizes issu-
ance of county OAA checks, they must
be accepted as correct.
Monthly averages of old age assistance
allowances and municipal relief grants
are not comparable since they relate to
basically different categories and to
agencies whose relief practices are dis-
similar. The overseer, for example, has
many clients who receive one or two re-
lief orders per month, while OAA is al-
ways granted for the entire month. He
has, too, many clients whose substandard
earnings he supplements with clothing,
milk, food, or some other form of relief.
Both of these classes of municipal relief
reduce unduly the overseer's monthly
average as compared to OAA.
However, the overseer's monthly aver-
age of $12.35 per single person for April,
1937, compares favorably with the SERA
average of $10.71 for the same category,
in April, 1935.
The one relief practice which the over-
seer and the OAA Bureau might have
in common, is a fair standard budget.
As pointed out in my earlier letter the
local overseer does have a standard
budget of $27.30 for a single person,
which he uses as a base for estimating
relief. The OAA has no standard budget.
Last April, we made a survey of fifty-
five unselected OAA cases, to whom al-
lowances recently had been granted. We
found that forty-two received $20 or
less monthly; twelve received between
$20 and $23, and one received $26, the
highest allowance made. Of the fifty-five,
only three were living with relatives, and
all were paying board out of their
meager stipends. Not one of them was
living with "legally responsible relatives
. . . able to furnish basic support."
Requests for increases have not been
particularly productive. For example, a
man of ninety-two, living alone in his
own home, wholly dependent, was granted
$14 a month in November, 1932. Despite
repeated requests, it was not until Octo-
ber, 1936, that he was increased to $17.
In the meantime, his taxes, house re-
pairs, clothing, fuel and so on, had to
be supplied by private agencies.
The purpose of laws instituting federal
and state old age assistance is to permit
the aged to round out their lives with
some degree of self-respect. This pur-
pose will not be attained until the ad-
ministration of old age assistance not
only in New Jersey, but in every other
state, is made consistent with intelligent
and humane relief practices.
LILA B. TERHUNE
Executive Secretary, Long Branch, N. J.,
Public Welfare Society
AUGUST 1937
267
Book Reviews
Truth Adorned
CRIME, CROOKS AND COPS, by August Voll-
mer and Alfred E. Parker. Funk and Wagnalls.
260 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Survey.
p* NOUGH cannot be said in approval
of the outstanding work that August
Vollmer has done. It has brought dis-
tinction to his calling. As police chief in
the city of Berkeley, Calif., as instructor
in the University of Chicago, as a recog-
nized expert frequently called upon by
other cities and as a leader in the Inter-
national Association of Chiefs of Police,
his work has shone like a light in a dark
place — and the Lord knows there are
plenty of dark places in the police ad-
ministrations of our American cities.
It is to be regretted that Chief Vollmer
did not select for his collaborator in this
book one who could do better justice to
the material. He has important things
to say about the government of police sys-
tems in this country, but evidently he
decided that more people would read an
account embellished with sensational
anecdotes than would read his own sim-
ple record of achievements. So we have
the story of Bluebeard Watson, multiple
wife killer, and the bloody bathroom
tragedy of Mrs. Lamson worked over
again. Neither one of these stories proves
much of anything nor adds greatly to the
book. The attempt to blame the adminis-
tration of justice for the results of the
Lamson case is indeed quite footless. If
ever there was a case where a long drawn
out trial was justified, it was this one,
where so much evidence existed on both
sides.
Chief Vollmer is at his best when he
gives to his brother officers the benefits
of his practical wisdom gained through
long experience. The ambitious chief
will glean many helpful hints from these
chapters. The analysis of the use of the
lie detector successfully operated by
Leonarde Keeler and the description of
other scientific aids to effective police ad-
ministration are important.
This reviewer has had the good for-
tune to visit the remarkable police or-
ganization in Berkeley presided over by
Chief Vollmer, has seen his crime detec-
tion laboratory and knows something of
the success that he has had in encom-
passing his police force with a profes-
sional atmosphere. The mystery of it all
is that with such an example of success-
ful police administration confronting
them, so few of our local police have
availed themselves of the scientific de-
vices described in this book. Ever since
Fosdick wrote his epoch making books
on European and American police sys-
tems, a dozen or more years ago, the
shortcomings of American local law en-
forcement bureaus, when contrasted with
those in European capitals, have been
well known and often remarked. The
splendid achievements of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation under the leader-
ship of J. Edgar Hoover have done much
to make up for this deficiency and are
enthusiastically described and approved
by Chief Vollmer in one of the later
chapters. His brief closing remarks about
the importance of the attitude of the
public towards the "cops" should be taken
to heart by every patriotic American.
This book is simply written — at times
it sounds almost like a fourth reader.
The scientifically minded person might
writhe under such a statement as "Then
there is the psychiatric test. It is for the
purpose of discovering whether a man
has any peculiar mental twists such as
the grouch, the crazy individual, the
dynamiter, or the agitator." In other in-
stances the critical reader might gain the
impression that the illustrative anecdote
recounted did not quite prove the point
that the author intended it to prove, but
in spite of the sugar coating of sensa-
tionalism, the student and the everyday
citizen will find here something to ponder.
New York SANFORD BATES
Goals for Educators
THE TEACHER AND SOCIETY, 1937 Year-
book of the John Dewey Society, edited by
William H. Kilpatrick. Appleton-Century. 360
pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
THE NATURE OF A LIBERAL COLLEGE,
by Henry M. Wriston. Lawrence College Press.
177 pp. Price $1.75 postpaid of The Survey.
tpDUCATORS will ask immediately,
"Why another organization of edu-
cators?" The answer is offered on the
jacket of this first yearbook of the John
Dewey Society, organized in February
1936. "It was named for John Dewey,
not because its founders wished to de-
vote themselves to an exposition of the
teachings of America's greatest educator
and thinker, but rather because they
felt that in his life and work he repre-
sents the soundest and most helpful ap-
proach to the study of the problems of
education. The purpose of the Society
is to foster scholarly and scientific in-
vestigations of problems pertaining to the
place and function of education in re-
lation to society and social change, and
to publish the results of such studies."
Nine professors of education from
Columbia, Northwestern, University of
Iowa and Ohio State University com-
prise the board of authors and accept
joint responsibility for the entire work.
The first twenty-five pages are devoted
to careful historical proof that education
in America was intended to prepare the
population for citizenship in a democ-
racy. The editors then point out that we
have missed, almost entirely, the thing
at which our forefathers aimed when
they set up free schools. Even our so-
called "citizenship" courses are hollow
and unreal, taught by teachers who them-
selves may not know how to vote. Chil-
dren are required to do a certain amount
of grubbing between the pasteboard
covers of a book, but they learn nothing
of how our government is actually run;
much less are they encouraged to do any
constructive thinking about it.
The authors then proceed to set forth
how American education could be made
to fulfill its original function — nine chap-
ters dealing with such topics as the eco-
nomic status of teachers, freedom of the
teacher to participate individually in com-
munity life, and the need of teachers as
a group to become more articulate in
forming public opinion.
There is little in the book that we
have not heard before, but it is put so
cogently, so completely, and with such
a close linking of cause and effect that
we are made to see these problems more
clearly than ever before. It should be
widely read and carefully pondered, not
only by educators — hoth administrators
and teachers — but by the reading and
thinking public, as well.
Henry M. Wriston, retiring president
of Lawrence College, Appleton, Wis.,
sets forth unpretentiously his philosophy
of The Nature of a Liberal Arts Col-
lege. Every page reflects a lustre that
can be given only by one whose spirit has
glowed with a truly liberal culture. This
slender volume is certainly not bitter,
not even pessimistic, but the so-called
"liberal arts" college of today is revealed
as a misnomer, imparting a liberal cul-
ture only by accident if at all. Most un-
fortunate of all, the individuals and in-
stitutions that make head-lines in at-
tempting to reform higher education are
contriving an even sorrier mess of the
whole affair. Dr. Wriston enters many
controversial fields in which he will find
a vigorous and well-armed opposition;
and in other fields, not so controversial,
he turns well-laid furrows of careful
thinking. DONALD HAYWORTH
University of Akron
Porter Lee Speaking . . .
SOCIAL WORK AS CAUSE AND FUNC-
TION, by Porter R. Lee. Columbia University
Press. 270 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
TN honor of his twenty-five years' as-
sociation with the New York School
of Social Work the faculty of that school
has assembled fifteen of Porter Lee's ad-
dresses and has published them under the
title of his address at San Francisco as
President of the National Conference of
Social Work in 1929.
In the quarter of a century during
which Porter Lee has been identified
with social work, and has spoken as its
268
THE SURVEY
• interpreter, his addresses have come to
be recognized as unique. He follows the
model of no other leader, but develops
his thesis in his own manner. Probably
»his outstanding characteristic is that he
is always positive and constructive. One
looks in vain for the denunciation and
bitter criticism which occupy such a large
portion of the writing and speaking of
social workers as well as of social re-
formers. His addresses merit, probably
more than those of any other leader in
our field, the term irenic. He says of
himself, in the last paper in this book,
"I am by nature a pacifist and have little
faith in the enduring vaiue of results
secured by force." We should know his
devotion to the methods of peaceful dis-
cussion, even though he never had made
such a statement.
As a writer, few social workers of our
generation are Porter Lee's equal. His
sentences flow easily, with an artistry of
structure that hides the method. Humor,
provocative contrasts, flashes of insight,
give him the style of the essayist, rather
than that of the public speaker. This is
the more remarkable because his per-
sonality contributes so much to his con-
versational charm and the flavor of his
addresses that one would expect the
printed record to be the loser.
These papers cover a wide range of
subjects and of methods. There is his
presidential address at San Francisco, in
which with philosophic grasp he summed
up the dynamic forces contributing to the
evolution of social work. There is the
noted paper at the Connecticut Confer-
ence in which he analyzed treatment
technics in terms which have persisted
ever since as foci of discussion and de-
velopment of social case work. There is
the analysis of that perennial dilemma of
the social worker in the area of ethics:
what are his obligations toward social
action ? Almost every paper is in a differ-
ent area of social work; but the persist-
ent thread which runs through them all
is his concern, yes, his dominant preoccu-
pation with social work as a profession;
and more specifically with the technics,
or methods of social case work. No one
in this field, not even Mary Richmond,
clung so tenaciously in all their public
utterances to that one theme.
Without obvious dependence on the
findings or the concepts of any of the
sciences that have contributed to social
work, these papers are records of scien-
tific thinking of a fundamental order.
The behaviors of actual persons in real
situations are almost always the data
from which he starts, and to which he
refers his hypotheses. It is somewhat
curious that being so literally scientific
in method, he should never relate his
own research to that of others.
As one lays down this book, one is
filled with an irrepressible wish that
Porter Lee would write more. What is
here is so good, it opens up so many
AUGUST 1937
new avenues of questions, is so provoca-
tive, that one wishes that its author
would spend a good deal more time in
writing. The reader is at least grateful
to the faculty of the New York School
for making available this collection of
valuable papers.
FRANK J. BRUNO
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
Practice Plus Science
SCHOOL HEALTH PROBLEMS, by Laurence
B. Chenoweth, M.D. and Theodore K Selkirk
MD Crofts. 387 pp. Price $3 postpaid of
The Survey.
FN their preface the authors express the
"hope that in combining their practical
experience as school health workers with
a survey of the medical and educational
literature, they have evolved a practical,
yet scientific book on the subject of school
health."
A study of the contents convinces the
reader that this hope has been realized
in a most satisfactory way. Each of the
seventeen chapters is followed by a long
and carefully compiled list of references
for further reading. The last one, dealing
with school health administration, is writ-
ten by Dr. Richard Arthur Bolt.
The first chapter gives an interesting,
though necessarily brief, resume of the
foundation of school health work. Such
interesting facts are given as that "Johann
Peter Frank (1745-1821) wrote exten-
sively on the subject of school hygiene
Victor Hugo . . . instituted school lunches."
School health problems considered in-
clude many types of handicaps, both men-
tal and physical. Two chapters are de-
voted to the proper methods for ascertain-
ing a child's physical condition. These
are followed by advice on preventive and
corrective measures. The role of physical
education is also emphasized.
In the section dealing with accidents
there appears "a general outline of some
of the important considerations in the pre-
vention of accidents," which should prove
of great value. Interesting accident statis-
tics are furnished by means of graphs
and illustrations credited to various
sources.
Drs. Chenoweth and Selkirk have done
a vast amount of research work and have
put their findings into compact form.
The table of contents, detailed index and
glossary will save time and labor for
the reader.
New York BEULAH FRANCE, R.N.
Gentle Art of Lobbying
PRESSURE POLITICS IN NEW YORK, by
Belle Zeller. Prentice-Hall. 310 pp. Price $3
postpaid of The Survey.
HPHIS book describes the more impor-
tant lobbies that exert pressure on
government in the State of New York—
among them the lobbies of the farming
interest, business, labor, and the profes-
sions. Concerning one of these lobbies,
the State Charities Aid Association, the
author says: "Thus, while there are
many pressure groups which are, per-
haps, more influential than the SCAA,
few are so highly esteemed at Albany.
Others ask for and secure much more
legislation from the state legislature; the
SCAA, however, receives much more re-
spect and, in proportion to its activities,
can show impressive results."
The eighth chapter, on lobbying tech-
niques, is a veritable symphony of politi-
cal music. Here the author gives us gov-
ernment and pressure groups as they
play against each other and with each
other in a process which combines black-
mail, feminine cajolery, strikes, and
pageantry, with gentle persuasion and
true education. Although this chapter,
the best in the book, does not establish
Miss Zeller as the peer of Beard, Bryce,
and Meriam, it does establish her as a
most promising junior member of that
august company.
New York JOHN S. GAMES
Psychoanalyst vs. Straw Men
THE NEUROTIC PERSONALITY OF OUR
riME. by Dr. Karen Homey. Norton. 299 pp
Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
TF the author had explained in her fore-
word that this is a compilation of
lectures delivered at the New School for
Social Research in New York instead of
conveying the implication that it repre-
sents an entirely new and original psycho-
analytic exposition of the neuroses in our
culture, many criticisms likely to be
made would have been forestalled.
A reputable, experienced and intuitive
psychoanalyst, Dr. Horney is known to
many students, colleagues and social
workers for her remarkable insight into
neurotic defenses and her clear exposi-
tion of her views. Her book presents well
the effects of various cultural factors in
producing neuroses, and gives extremely
valuable clinical explanation of a number
of baffling neurotic attitudes. Perhaps the
latter rather than the former represents
the greatest contribution of the book, es-
pecially to readers already interested in
psychoanalysis.
In her presentation of cultural etiologi-
cal factors in neuroses, Dr. Horney
gives too little credit to other writers
both in psychoanalysis and in such allied
fields as sociology and anthropology. In
combining this viewpoint with her psy-
choanalytic views she assumes a polemi-
cal attitude, implying that Freud and
most other analysts disagree with her,
an attitude which will undoubtedly be
annoying to the many psychoanalysts who
share her views from their own experi-
ence. Furthermore, many of the con-
troversial points which she brings in —
as if she were crusading to save psycho-
analysis from itself— are arguments with
straw men.
Psychoanalysts might wish that the au-
thor had carried her interpretations of
neurotic attitudes further, beyond the
269
point of the basic anxiety defended
against, into the unconscious content of
this anxiety. By failing to do so, and in
fact by appearing to treat disdainfully
the established facts of infantile psycho-
sexual development and the theories of
biologically founded instinctual drives, she
gives the false impression that her ex-
cellent analysis of ego defenses and atti-
tudes is all of psychoanalysis that is im-
portant, to the neglect of the great body
of psychoanalytic knowledge of the un-
conscious tediously built up by Freud
and other analysts as well as by her own
previous contributions.
However, the positive values of the
book, especially insofar as it is an im-
plicit plea for mutual cooperation and in-
terchange of observations among psycho-
analysts, sociologists and anthropologists,
make it a significant contribution to the
understanding of neurotic illness in our
present-day culture.
ROBERT P. KNIGHT, M.D.
Topeka, Kan.
Neglected Riches
SUPERIOR CHILDREN: THEIR PHYSIO-
LOGICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT, by John Edward Bentley.
Norton, 331 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The
Survey.
' I AHE publication of another volume on
*• feebleminded children would merit
scant notice — there is already a vast lit-
erature on such children. But the pub-
lication of a volume on superior children
is an event. The literature on gifted chil-
dren is meagre. Yet gifted children are
the nation's most precious resource. The
little interest that has been shown in
their nature and nurture is a national
tragedy.
While Dr. Bentley's volume is not
wholly an original contribution to our
understanding of gifted children, it is an
extraordinarily interesting and able com-
pilation of the scattered literature con-
cerning them. It is particularly valuable
for having brought together, and in-
tegrated with our knowledge, the grow-
ing periodical literature. The last general
book dealing with superior children — Leta
Hollingworth's Gifted Children: Their
Nature and Nurture — was published in
1926. In the intervening years, much has
been learned of the characteristics and
problems of such children.
Dr. Bentley covers in thorough fashion
the problem of the nature of intellectual
giftedness, its relationship to talent, and
the physical, mental, emotional, and so-
cial traits of the gifted. Of particular
significance, because so contrary to popu-
lar opinion, is his emphasis upon the per-
sonal stability and social adaptability of
these children. The more original mate-
rial of the volume, dealing with the goals
and methods of education for gifted chil-
dren and the relationship of their edu-
cation to the problem of leadership in
our democratic society, should prove of
the greatest interest both to educators
and social workers in a variety of fields.
One cannot but speculate, as one lays
down this volume, what the effect upon
our national destiny might be of divert-
ing to the education of gifted children
an amount equal to that which we spend
upon the education of our feebleminded
children. One is inclined to believe that
when ultimately the history of American
democracy is written, the extent to which
we have solved the problem of the con-
servation and utilization of the gifted
and talented elements of our population
will have much to do with that history.
HARVEY ZORBAUGH
Clinic for the Social Adjustment of the
Gifted, New York University
Human Manikins on Parade
THE HUMAN MACHINE, by John Yerbury
Dent. Knopf. 294 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
DEHAVIORISM is not the topic for
violent conversation that it was half
a dozen years ago — but this does not
mean that the behavioristic interpreta-
tion of man has declined. In truth, the
lack of heat when behaviorism is dis-
cussed nowadays likely reflects that now
it is taken for granted. Dent's book may
not have the reception it merits, since
the mechanistic description of the con-
duct of men and women no longer makes
headlines.
Following in the steps of Jacques Loeb
and John B. Watson, Dent unfolds an
easily read account of the evolution and
development of man, his reaction to his
internal and external environments. He
touches briefly upon the genesis of per-
sonality quirks, and upon sleep, and hyp-
notism.
The author has the helpful quality of
stating his viewpoints with a touch of
tantalizing insolence which makes the
reader pull himself up and do some think-
ing for himself. Christian Science is por-
trayed as a subtle application of hypnosis;
psychoanalysis as too subjective and mak-
ing a therapeutic mountain out of a
sometimes successful molehill. The
changing world, he feels, has precipi-
tated individual problems which demand
that physicians give more attention to
the use of psychology with their patients.
The well read person will find in
this book little new information, but it
should help clarify thinking. The casual
reader will find it interesting. It is much
sounder and more stimulating than Dor-
sey's attempts along similar lines.
Colgate University
DONALD A. LAIRD
Inferiority — Now a Feeling
OUR CHILDREN IN A CHANGING WORLD,
Erwin Wexberg, M.D., with Henry E, Fritsch.
Macmillan Company, 232 pp. Price $2 postpaid
of The Survey.
ILTERE is presented an interesting out-
line of the approach to child guid-
ance in terms of the theories of Alfred
Adler. The material, therefore, contains
nothing new. In general and special prob-
lems and in theory the inferiority feeling
is the sole explanation of all human
frailty. It might be noted, however, that
the term "inferiority feeling" is used
rather than the earlier, "inferiority com-
plex." The regenerative aims of a cor-
rective education are said to be based
upon the development of independence,
courage, sense of responsibility and a
well developed social feeling. No one can
quarrel with these goals, although they
need have no essential relationship to a
sense of inferiority.
New York IRA S. WILE, M.D.
"Bronze Booklets"
ADULT EDUCATION AMONG NEGROES, by
Ira De A. Reid. 73 pp. THE NEGRO AND
HIS MUSIC, by Alain Locke. 142 pp. NEGRO
ART— PAST AND PRESENT, by Alain
Locke. 122 pp. A WORLD VIEW OF RACE.
by Ralph J. Bundle. 98 pp. Together these com-
pose the First Series of "Bronze Booklets."
Associates in Negro Folk Education, Washing-
ton, D.C. Price 25 cents each; large discounts
for quantity orders. Order direct of publishers.
TLJITHERTO adult education among
Negroes has been too largely self-
improvement — nothing more. The move-
ment which expresses itself in these
booklets does not permit the reader to
forget that his own cultural advance and
that of his family are bound up with
the emancipation of the social group.
Mr. Reid, now professor of sociology
at Atlanta University, shows how much
already has been achieved in adapting
the general principles of adult folk
education to the special needs of
Negroes, more particularly in New York
and Atlanta. His chief concern, how-
ever, is with principles and methods. Of
necessity, no program of adult education
among Negroes can succeed, he finds,
if it does not take as its starting point
the particular interests of the group, as
such, and appeal to its most mentally
alert members. This among Negroes
means the race-conscious.
For the same practical reason, Mr.
Reid warns against an exclusively intel-
lectual approach and suggests a good
deal of reliance, in the early stages, on
that moral sense and that artistic crea-
tiveness which prevail so widely among
American Negroes.
Readers of The Survey hardly need to
be told that Alain Locke expounds the
Negro's contributions to music and the
arts in an informing and stimulating
way. One may add that he withstands
the temptation of claiming too much for
the Negro's creative share in world
culture.
In recent years there has been rapid
growth not only in professional art ac-
tivity but also in art appreciation among
Negroes. As in all truly popular art
movements, there is in this a robust tol-
erance for both tradition and experiment,
a tolerance which the noted author of
these booklets happily shares.
Each chapter ends with suggestions for
further reading and with questions for
270
THE SURVEY
group discussion, the latter distinguished
by the fact that they really are dis-
cussable. This is also true of the ques-
tions attached to Dr. Bundle's chapters
on a very difficult topic. For it is his
troublesome task to explain why there
is so much race conflict when according
to the testimony of modern science race,
in the usual meaning of the term, does
not exist.
A second series of booklets is prom-
ised, to deal with the Negro in relation
to economic reconstruction, American fic-
tion, poetry, drama and history. The
venture deserves every success.
New York BRUNO LASKER
Ten Years of Research
TWINS: A STUDY OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRON-
MENT, by Horatio H. Newman, Frank N. Free-
man and Karl J. Holzinger. University of Chi-
cago Press. 369 pp. Price $4 postpaid of The
Survey.
POR more than ten years the authors
have been engaged in intensive in-
vestigations bearing upon the age-old
question of heredity and environment.
They have used fifty Jike-sexed fraternal
twins, fifty "identical" twins reared to-
gether, and nineteen "identical" twins
reared apart. This study demonstrates
the merits of collaborative investigations
representing slightly different approaches
to the same problem, and of prolonged
intensive study of a specific biological
problem. The authors have raised and
discussed most pertinent questions which
might arise, even though they have not
been able to offer final determinations
concerning heredity and environment.
The first part of the book deals with
the general biological aspects of twin-
ning, ways and means of diagnosing the
zygosity of twin pairs. Dr. Newman, who
takes responsibility for these chapters,
claims that the existence of two types of
twins is established beyond doubt. He is
so thoroughly convinced of the validity
of the similarity technique in diagnosing
twin types that his reasoning appears at
times to run in circles.
Part IT deals with the comparative
data on the fifty fraternal and fifty
identical twin pairs. It has been assumed
that differences between pairs of these
groups would be attributable primarily
to hereditary factors. These data have
been given complete statistical analyses,
the results of which can be interpreted
only in terms of specific measurements.
Measures representing physical dimen-
sions and appearances are found to be
less subject to environmental influences
than are measures representing general
ability, achievement, personality, or tem-
perament. It should be noted in this
connection that the two groups were
originally classified on the basis of physi-
cal similarity.
In Part III, case history reports are
given as well as the comparative inter-
pretations of the data concerning the
nineteen pairs of identical twins reared
apart. Some of these chapters will be of
interest to the general reader who is not
especially concerned with methodology.
After comparing data on the three groups
of subjects, the authors lay no claim to
a definite solution of the nature-nurture
problem. It seems to the reviewer that
such failure is in no way due to a lack
of thoroughness of the investigation, but
rather to the basic concept upon which it
was undertaken. Heredity and environ-
ment are facets of a growth process and
to conceive of them as a dichotomy con-
fuses the issue.
The book will be of aid to students
of biological research and parts of it
will interest the general reader. The
parts are well differentiated, so the gen-
eral readers would not need to wade
through the more technical chapters.
MYRTLE B. McGRAw
Babies Hospital, New York
Means Justify the End
THE NEGRO IN THE PHILADELPHIA
PRESS, by George E. Simpson. University of
Pennsylvania Press. 158 pp. Price $2 postpaid
of The Survey.
IV/fAKING a "sociological newspaper
analysis" of the major Philadelphia
newspapers on the subject of Negro
news-items, the author statistically de-
termines their quantitative and qualita-
tive trends. His main conclusions are
that for the years sampled Negro news
was roughly 30 percent unfavorable, 60
percent neutral, and only 10 percent fa-
vorable and that, with slight recent im-
provement, constructive news of Negroes
is a rather neglected aspect of metro-
politan journalism. But his methods are
more important than his specific conclu-
sions. On such controversial subjects and
in such fields, trends, though significant,
are hard to determine, but a method of
exact objective tracing is of great socio-
logical importance. A. L.
Underlay of Casework
SUPERVISION OF SOCIAL CASE WORK, by
Virginia P. Robinson. University of North
Carolina Press. 199 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
T3V her formulation of the psycho-
logical principles underlying training
in the practice of case work, Miss Robin-
son has made an invaluable contribution.
Since these principles are fundamentals
of any educational process, .her book is
of importance not only to social workers
but to all those engaged in any phase of
education.
Learning, says the author in Part I,
is organic and dynamic. All learning in-
volves a part-whole movement of the
self, whereby the self, first, projects onto
the environment and organizes external
elements around its own center; second,
identifies with the environment, adds to
itself what it needs from the outside and
rejects what is incompatible. This part-
whole movement continues throughout
life and means constant change and reor-
ganization of the self.
The individual instinctively resists
change because it disorganizes the pres-
ent self and threatens individual identity.
In training for any profession and more
particularly for social case work, suc-
cess depends largely upon the student's
capacity to accept the fundamental change
of the personal self necessary for the
development of the professional self.
This professional self, with new ways of
relating itself to others, new attitudes and
new behavior from the old self, has
achieved a responsible control and dis-
cipline of its own will. Miss Robinson
makes it clear that "these changes in
personal relationships are by-products
of case work training and not its ends.
The end is the development of a pro-
fessional self which can relate itself to
people and situations not in terms of its
own past experiences but in terms of the
factors in the professional situation."
In Part II supervision is described in
detail as the educational method that pro-
vides the experience in which the student
is given the opportunity to reorganize
the structure and functioning of the self.
The technical aspects of this educational
process and the use of the limits which
supervision must recognize, are vividly
illustrated by case material and experi-
ences common in the daily work of every
student and supervisor. An understanding
of Part I and of case work practice it-
self is essential to mastering the method
described in Part II.
In a short review, it is impossible to
do justice to this book. Every social
worker and educator should read it, live
with it, and make it a part of his pro-
fessional self.
New York ELIZABETH H. DEXTER
Spirit of CCC
THIS NEW AMERICA, by A. C. Oliver, Jr.
and Harold M. Dudley. Longmans Green. 188
pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
A LMOST everyone connected with
the CCC program, from President
Roosevelt to the enrollee, is represented
here and has some concise statement to
make. Two clergymen, Mr. Oliver,
Senior Chaplain of the Walter Reed Hos-
pital and Mr. Dudley, Chaplain Reserve,
U. S. Army, have collaborated in editing
the material. In addition to the Presi-
dent, contributors include Robert Fech-
ner, director of the CCC; Harry H.
Woodring, Secretary of War; Colonel
Alva J. Brasted, chief of chaplains; How-
ard W. Oxley, director of CCC camp
education; Richard R. Brown, assistant
executive director NYA ; Aubrey Wil-
liams, executive director, NYA; Ray-
mond Moley, editor of Today, and many
others.
The only original contribution of the
editors is a proposal for a "Franklin D.
Roosevelt Big Brother Movement" to be
established in connection with the CCC
AUGUST 1937
271
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This is the counseling and placement agency
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problems. State age, education, experience,
salary expected, etc. 7448 Survey.
SITUATIONS WANTED
EXECUTIVE (Man), many years experience in
children's work, desires position with progres-
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experience in teaching metal, leather, wood,
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MISCELLANEOUS
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anxious, needing help in meeting perplexing
personal problems, a retired physician offers
friendly counsel for those who desire it. No
fees. 7419 Survey.
Experienced Orphanage Superintendent seeki»E
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ROOM FOR RENT
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FOR RENT
Camp, shaded by trees, perched on a rock, over-
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PAMPHLETS AND PERIODICALS
The American Journal of Nursing shows the part
which professional nurses take in the better-
ment of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00
a year. 60 West 60 Street, New York N Y
to EMPLOYERS
Who Are Planning to Increase Their Staffs
We Supply:
Executive. Dietitian. Gfad Nmm
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HOLMES EXECUTIVE PERSONNEL
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Start Right
this Fall by listing your organiza-
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with a national committee composed of
"eminent American citizens, working
solely in a non-governmental, voluntary
capacity, organized to formulate policies
and a practical program for the benefit
of all youth needing special care." Such
a committee would be expected to "es-
tablish vital connections between the
camp life and the institutions of sur-
rounding communities, foster plans for
educational scholarships for outstanding
enrollees, and maintain steadfastly the
idealism and morale-building strength
which have made the corps notable these
first four years."
There is a useful appendix containing
statistical information taken from pub-
lished governmental reports.
State College, Pa. HOWARD ROWLAND
Run of the Shelves
PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL ADMINISTRA-
TION, by T. S. Simey. Oxford University
Press. 180 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
DISCLAIMING at some length all the
things that his book is not, the author
finally settles down into a discussion of
the legislative and administrative prin-
ciples supporting the English system of
social services. He is particularly con-
cerned with centralized versus local au-
thority. He finds much to be said for
and against them both and concludes that
both have the defects of their qualities.
SOCIETY AND ITS PROBLEMS: AN INTRO-
DUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES or SOCIOLOGY, by
Grove Samuel Gow. Crowell. 669 pp. Price $3
postpaid of The Survey.
HERE is an old friend in a new dress —
the fourth edition, completely revised and
reset, of a volume first published in 1922.
Many chapters have been completely re-
written in the light of new data, and six
are entirely new. Their subjects: Groups
and Institutions, Personality, The Urban
Community, The Rural Community, Un-
employment, Mental Disorders.
INDUSTRIAL RELATION'S IN URBAN
TRANSPORTATION, by Emerson P. Schmidt.
University of Minnesota Press. 264 pp. Price
$3 postpaid of The Survey.
THE author details the history of urban
transportation in the United States.
Against that background he gives the
fifty-year experience of the Amalgamated
Association of Street, Electric Railway,
and Motor Coach Employes of Amer-
ca in using arbitration to settle all labor
disputes.
FUNDAMENTALS OF PSYCHOLOGIC GUID-
ANCE: MENTAL HYGIENE IN THE SERVICE OF
SCHOOL AND SOCIETY, by Albert J. Levine.
Educational Monograph Press. 96 pp. Price $1
postpaid of The Survey.
A BRIEF, well organized discussion of
uidance, written primarily for teach-
ers. This is an intentionally caseless pre-
ientation, which sets forth the general
principles that should underlie child
uidance. While the general viewpoint
s simple and eclectic, the form of writ-
ng is pedantic and weakly Adlerian.
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office:
762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
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To which all communications should be sent
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Lucius R. EASTMAN, -president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
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retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIPPLE, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRICO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN-
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MA*Y R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
SEPTEMBER 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 9
Frontispiece 276
Horse Collars and Prisons JAMES v. BENNETT 277
Looking Back at the Long Vacation CLARA LAMBERT 279
Standard of Living SELDEN c. MENEFEE 281
A Relief Agency Plays the Market BENJAMIN GLASSBERG 282
Charity Racketeering KATHRYN CLOSE 284
Aunt Minnie's New House ALICE E. MORELAND 286
A Million Dollars for Birth Control LENA GILLIAM 287
The Common Welfare 288
The Social Front 290
WPA-Relief-WPA • Public Assistance • The Insurances
• Security Abroad • Concerning Children • Birth Control •
Planning Health • Plague Fighters • Citizen Service • Pro-
fessional • People and Things
Readers Write 299
The Pamphlet Shelf 299
Book Reviews 300
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• Someone has to tackle the fundamentals.
— C. F. KETTERING, Detroit.
• You keep out of war by being sound in
the head and light on the feet. — DOROTHY
THOMPSON, news commentator.
• The first lien upon the gross earnings of
any company is a living wage for its em-
ployes.— CHARLES P. TAFT, II, Cincinnati.
• Can you imagine the effect if all the na-
tions of the world would join together and
sing "Hallelujah?" — KITTY CHEATHAM. paci-
fist and singer.
• The ordinary American just does not en-
joy the spectacle of anyone who thinks he
is more than life-size. — WALTER LIPPMANN,
news commentator.
• No amount of skill in administration and
no perfection of organization can take the
place of human understanding. — DAVID E.
LILIENTHAL, Tennessee Valley Authority.
• If we can embrace the world with maternal
love it will shine with peace and grace. Let
us shake hands together and endeavor to
create peace in the world through mothers'
love. — COUNTESS NOBUKO SAJONISHI, sister
to the Empress of Japan.
• The competence of the public to decide
wisely depends largely on the degree to
which pressure groups enlighten the public
mind; not upon the extent to which they
arouse our emotions. — PROF. HARWOOD L.
CHILDS, Princeton University.
So They Say
• There is nothing so deadly as a completely
unified social structure. — EDUARD C. LINDE-
MAN, Ntw York School of Social Work.
• The two dominant facts in the modern eco-
nomic world are technology and corporations.
— HENRY A. WALLACE, Secretary of Agri-
culture.
» Some day I hope to see humanity free
from bunkiology, but not today, beloved,
not today. — BRUCE CALVERT, editor, The
Open Road.
• The life of the conscientious editor is a
warfare against the misuse, misunderstanding
and misspelling of words, and the end is de-
feat.— GEORGE E. MACDONALD, editor, The
Truth Seeker.
• The idea that any one denomination is
the exclusive or particular channel of God's
grace is as dead as Queen Anne. Only some
people don't know it. — THE REV. E. STANLEY
JONES to the Federal Council of Churches of
Christ in America.
• We have yearned for peace, we have
prayed for peace, we have planned for peace.
we have talked for peace, but always we
have been unwilling, or at least not ready tc
pay the price of peace, and that price, which
bears the stamp of Heaven, is good will. —
THE REV. EDWARD L. STEPHENS, Richmond,
Virginia.
• Public relations consist of everything we
do. — SOLOMON LOWENSTEIN, New York.
• You cannot fight evils by resolutions. —
THE REV. J. H. OLDHAM, secretary, Interna-
tional Missionary Council.
• Propaganda, like medicine or law, can be
socially used or abused. — EDWARD L. BER-
NAYS, public relations counselor, New York
• No one knows how many limitations the
human will can overcome. — PROF. HARRY D.
KITSON, Teachers College, Columbia Univer-
sity.
• Politics here [Italy], as in the United
States, has long been a sphere into which
gentlemen hesitated to venture. — HAROLD
CALLENDER in New York Times.
• The American conception of decency, mo-
rality and respect of government is far more
important than a billion dollars worth of
revenue. — GOVERNOR FRANK MURPHY, Mich-
igan.
• It is impossible to achieve universal jus-
tice, efficient administration and complete
coverage all at one stroke. — JOHN J. CORSON,
assistant executive director. Social Security
Hoard.
• O Lord, bless our homes as they go from
place to place, and watch over our friends
and loved ones as we run across them from
time to time. — Benediction from "Sunday
Morning in Trailer Town," MARCUS BACH in
The Christian Century.
If intelligence is to serve us in this age or confustoi
able guide for peaceful evolution Solomc
BERKELEY
WASHINGTON
EVANSTON
PASADENA
LINCOLN
CAMBRIDGE
NEWTON
ALBANY
SAN DIEGO
NEW HAVEN
PORTLAND. ME.
RICHMOND
TOPEKA
ST. PAUL
HARRISBURG
SPRINGFIELD, ILL
HARTFORD
WILKES-BARRE
MINNEAPOLIS
PROVIDENCE
NASHVILLE
LANSING
COLUMBUS
MONTGOMERY
SACRAMENTO
ROCHESTER
CINCINNATI
OAK PARK
DES MOINES
ERIE
JACKSONVILLE
TRENTON
SAN FRANCISCO
PITTSBURGH
JOHNSTOWN
KNOXVILLE
MT. VERNON
SCHENECTADY
DULUTH
LOS ANGELES
DAYTON
BOSTON
DENVER
LONG BEACH
OMAHA
LITTLE ROCK
LANCASTER
PORTLAND. ORE.
INDIANAPOLIS
WILMINGTON
CHICAGO
SYRACUSE
SALT LAKE CITY
CLEVELAND
ATLANTA
BRIDGEPORT
ROCKFORD
SOUTH BEND
YONKERS
READING
TAMPA
EAST ORANGE
ALLENTOWN
TACOMA
NEW YORK
CHARLESTON. W.VA
WICHITA
ELIZABETH
SEATTLE
MIAMI
TROY
SPOKANE
WORCESTER
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
PHILADELPHIA
Try This
Social Intelligence Test
On Your Town
WHERE THE SURVEY IS READ
Run down the column at the left (read up at the right)
and see where your city stands. Is its line long enough?
Or will it bear stretching?
Each line shows, not our actual circulation, but the pro-
portion of Survey subscribers to population. To our way
of thinking they are good lines, for they are elastic.
Where The Survey is read, there you will find citizens
who believe in the fundamental right of all the people
in their community to "live with dignity as human
beings"; who know that adverse conditions can be
changed by concentrated responsibility and concerted
effort; and who, through The Survey, learn from month
to month what other men and women in other commu-
nities are doing to bring this about.
Where The Survey is read, there you will find some-
thing which, for want of a better term, let's call social
intelligence.
For example, take the field of social work. Is there need
in your city for better understanding of social measures;
for a wider base of support for social agencies; and for
more effective personnel and administration, public and
private? Consider how important an element the num-
ber of Survey readers in your community can be, in
meeting these needs and putting social intelligence to
work.
4 run
rt inwrxx A
-rrr" IK
<• *•• mi
ertainly The Survey must be considered an indispens-
Dwenstein, president, National Conference of Social Work
WILL YOU HELP US TO STRETCH THESE LINES?
More than most magazines, The Survey grows through the good will of its
readers. The soundest circulation gains we have ever made have come where
Survey friends introduced The Survey to their friends. In some instances
these friends of theirs were social workers who needed to keep abreast of
advances in their profession. Or they were board members, volunteers,
citizens, who without personal recommendation might think it "just
another magazine," or had never heard that it was ready to serve them as
an indispensable guide in "this age of confusion." Will you put The Survey
before just such friends of yours?
HOW TO GO ABOUT IT
Make a list of half a dozen, or a dozen, — people you know who are
"natural" Survey readers. Put it to them as strongly and as personally
as you can. Make them understand that this subscription of theirs is
wanted in your town no less than in our office ; that you have singled
them out as just the sort to lengthen the line of social intelligence
locally.
Come away each time with an order for a $2 trial subscription. For
this sum, as part of our extension program in this anniversary year,
we will send to each NEW reader recruited by you: either 7 months
of both our magazines, Survey Graphic and The Midmonthly Survey
(this will save a dollar) or 12 months of either periodical (again a
dollar saved) .
Set a goal for yourself at the start of at least three such subscriptions.
Send us their names and addresses, together with the $6.00 — and as
some token of our appreciation we will enter a Free Anniversary Gift
Subscription to some fourth person of your choice. For every three
additional new subcribers you send we shall in turn accord you an
additional gift subscription.
WHAT TO AIM FOR IN YOUR TOWN
If every reader of The Survey should send in three new names, our
circulation would jump to over 100,000. Berkeley's line would shoot
across both pages and beyond. That's day dreaming perhaps, but there
is no reason why Somerville, Mass., for instance, should not extend
to the length of Roanoke, Va. ; why Philadelphia should not stretch
to that of Washington, D. C. and Evanston, 111.
Being realistic, we have set quotas city by city ; also for smaller towns
which do not appear in the list. Drop a post card to The Survey,
112 E. 19th St., New York, and we will tell you what the quota is
for your town, in stretching its line of social intelligence. Perhaps you
can get others to help give it a tug.
SOMERVILLE
LOWELL
FALL RIVER
EAST ST LOUIS
BAYONNE
LYNN
JERSEY CITY
PASSAIC
TOLEDO
TULSA
SAN ANTONIO
ATLANTIC CITY
COVINGTON
PAWTUCKET
EL PASO
OUINCY
ALTOONA
MOBILE
HAMMOND
MEMPHIS
CANTON
NEW BEDFORD
HUNTINGTON
FORT WORTH
PATERSON
NORFOLK
NEW ORLEANS
LAWRENCE
SAVANNAH
MANCHESTER
BROCKTON
HOUSTON
SHREVEPORT
NIAGARA FALLS
WINSTON-SALEM
NEWARK
EVANSVILLE
BIRMINGHAM
CAMDEN
ROANOKE
ST. JOSEPH
GARY
CHATTANOOGA
BALTIMORE
YOUNGSTOWN
DALLAS
UTICA
| CHARLESTON, S. C.
WHEELING
SPRINGFIELD. O.
FLINT
DAVENPORT
BUFFALO
SIOUX CITY
NEW BRITAIN
GRAND RAPIDS
AKRON
OAKLAND
PONTIAC
SCRANTON
PEORIA
LAKEWOOD
FORT WAYNE
DETROIT
OKLAHOMA CITY
ST. LOUIS
LOUISVILLE
WATERBURY
KANSAS CITY
CHARLOTTE
BINGHAMTON
MILWAUKEE
KANSAS CITY
TERRE HAUTE
A SAGINAW
I II
fllfi
Prepared by U.S. Bureau of Prisons
"Nothing to do"
THE SURVEY
SEPTEMBER 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 9
Horse Collars and Prisons
By JAMES V. BENNETT
Director, United States Bureau of Prisons
HORSE collars have come to mean more to the
American prison system during the past year than
the iron collars so generally worn by American
convicts a hundred and twenty-five years ago. The Supreme
Court has said in effect that the manufacture of horse col-
lars in prison must stop. It did this, in a case turning on a
shipment of horse collars, when it upheld the validity of the
Ashurst-Sumners Federal Prison Labor Act prohibiting
the shipment of prison-made articles into states regulating
their sale or use. The decision itself not only points out a
new way by which federal powers can implement other-
wise ineffective state laws but it also marks the end of an
epoch in the American system of prison management.
The managers of our first American prison, the old Wal-
nut Street Jail in Philadelphia, solved the problem of em-
ployment by riveting iron collars about the necks of the
prisoners, chaining them together and working them on
the streets of the city. But the blood-abhorring Quakers
soon changed this and evolved a system of solitary con-
finement and handicrafts which developed alongside of the
Auburn scheme of employing the prisoners in congregate
workshops and housing them in massive cell blocks. While
the Pennsylvania system was followed abroad, the Auburn
plan has been followed here, almost universally. Now a
substitute must be found for a system which required the
employment of men in shops and the disposition of their
products in the open market. True, for some time most of
our prison administrators had seen the handwriting on the
wall and had been casting about for some substitute, but
so far the expedients tried have failed woefully to solve
the problem of prison idleness.
No better example can be found of the problems aris-
ing from the Ashurst-Sumners Prison Labor Act and com-
panion state legislation than in the situation in Kentucky
where the test case arose. Just before the Ohio River flood
mercifully forced its abandonment, I visited the old Frank-
fort Reformatory and, in company with the warden,
walked about the institution. Everywhere about the yard
men were squatting on the ground or leaning in little
groups against a wall or pacing restlessly back and forth
across the narrow enclosure. The warden told me that a
year before his institution had been a humming workshop
with every man provided with some kind of a job. Some
of them made work-shirts, some of them made chairs, others
made horse collars, mule whips, dog leashes and the like.
In 1931 about 3000 of the 3800 men in all Kentucky
institutions were employed. Just before the floods early last
spring, only about 1200 out of a total population of 4000
had any kind of work whatsoever. Nearly 800 of those
reported as working were engaged on "maintenance," that
is, cleaning, cooking and taking in each other's wash. And
all of these nearly 3000 idle prisoners are in a state where
the first "homemade" prison developed.
IN 1796 the daring and desperate horse-thieves of the
frontier state of Kentucky were placed in a prison con-
structed by popular subscriptions of money or land. "An
amiable gentleman, very sanguine and somewhat visionary
in his notions," by the name of John Stuart Hunter, was
given the delightful job, with the munificent stipend of
$333.33 a year, of guarding the prisoners and making them
earn their own keep. The prisoners made nails, log-chains,
axes, hoes and shoes which the agent advertised at "the
most reduced prices for cash or for whiskey, brandy, cider,
lacure, pork, bacon, etc." Until relatively recent times the
Kentucky prison system, thus inaugurated, was self-sup-
porting and incidentally also paid considerable dividends to
those in charge and to the state, through its system of leas-
ing prisoners and allowing manufacturers to contract for
their labor.
The situation in Kentucky is no worse than in most
of the other states. As a matter of fact conditions are
better there just now because the state has embarked upon
an intelligent program of using its inmate labor to con-
struct a new institution to replace the old Frankfort Re-
formatory. But mobs of idle, aimless prisoners can be seen
in almost every American correctional institution. In Mary-
land, for example, the contract labor shops were shut down
277
overnight, and the men do nothing but march back and
forth, back and forth, and round and round a small yard.
In West Virginia, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and
many other states thousands of men who formerly were
employed have been jammed again into already over-
crowded prisons with absolutely nothing to occupy their
minds and bodies.
What is to become of the American prison system? Is
there such a thing as penology ? Will men go out of prison
equipped with something else than a prison pallor and the
label "Ex-Con."? Can we overcome the public prejudice
established in pioneer and reconstruction days against a
system and methods which rightly brought public con-
demnation ? All of the psychiatrists, psychiatric social
workers, sociologists, classificationists and moralists in the
world will not be able to redirect the tendencies of the
men and women who get into prison unless they have some
tools with which to work. As James A. Johnston, now
warden of the Alcatraz Penitentiary and formerly in
charge of one of the largest prisons in the United States,
has said :
The great necessity in prison is work. If I had to manage
a prison upon condition that I make my choice of one thing,
and only one, as an aid to discipline, as an agency for reform,
for its therapeutic value, I would unhesitatingly choose work
— just plain, honest-to-goodness work. Of course, I wouldn't
like to have to concentrate so on a choice and it would be
unwise to be so restricted. Physical examinations, medical
treatments, bodily repairs, educational opportunities, spiritual
guidance, psychiatry, psychology, are necessary and helpful.
But the habit of work is what men most need.
SINCE the time when the free citizens of Nineveh
rioted because one of their triumphant kings returned
from a single campaign with 208,000 prisoners whom he
put to work immediately in competition with "honest"
citizens, there has 'been opposition to the employment of
prisoners. Basically this opposition has sprung from the
feeling that the labor of prisoners has been exploited and
the products of their industry have been thrown on the
market at ruinous prices. It is true enough that instances
exist of graft and exploitation in the management of prison
industries by private contractors, of misbranding convict-
made goods, of dumping distressed prison merchandise upon
the market, and of undue concentration of prisoners in par-
ticular trades or industries. It has seemed to many prison
officials that it would be possible to cure these evils with-
out the total elimination of opportunities for prison em-
ployment. Many of them have believed that the changing
attitude of the taxpayer would make it possible now to
evolve a penal system based upon profit for the prisoner
instead of for the prison. But perhaps, after all there was
no way out short of absolutely barring the sale in the open
market of prison-made products. Be that as it may the
plain facts are that drastic prohibitory legislation is now
upon the statute books and the prison men must find a way
out of the dilemma thus created.
It is futile to argue that the American system of im-
prisonment can continue in its present form without pro-
viding some means of occupying the minds and hands of
those sentenced to "hard labor." To understand this, one
must gain some concept of the routine of the prisoner and
his world. The prison corridor, the lock step, the wall, the
bars, the criminal's warped ideas of manhood, his un-
deviating faithfulness to a remorseless code, his bitterness
toward the social order and his scorn for the thrifty and
industrious, are all attributes of life in a world altogether
foreign to most people. Never is there relief in a prison
from the exacting regularity of every action and every
move from morning until night. Precisely on the moment,
the cell doors are unlocked and the men march to their
meals. Three, four or five times a day, at exactly the same
moment, they stand at the door of their cells to be counted.
In many prisons, for months in advance, the content of
the diet can be predicted. From eight to fourteen hours a
day the prisoner must lie on his bunk in his cell, often with
nothing to occupy his mind. Worry, lack of work and ex-
ercise may make it impossible for him to sleep more than a
few hours. All that many of them can look forward to is
the adventure of combing their hair or cleaning their teeth,
cursing the guard or booing the warden as he goes by on
his daily inspection tour. The prisoners "build time" list-
lessly, unsmilingly, usually sullenly. The result is that the
whole prison atmosphere is charged with bitterness, rancor,
slothfulness, and an all pervading sense of defeat.
How is all of this to be changed and hope substituted for
futility, industry for idleness, and cooperation for sullen
opposition? The answer in a single word is "Work"-
hard, constructive, habit-forming work. A way must be
found to employ the hosts now shuffling aimlessly about
the prison yards. Almost everyone recognizes the economic
justice of employing the prisoner and making him earn a
portion of his upkeep. He must be taught to earn his bread
by the sweat of his brow and must, as President Roosevelt
has stated, "learn that work in itself is honorable and is a
practical substitute for criminal methods of earning one's
livelihood."
Recent statistics are not available as to the situation in
the state institutions. But we know that only about fifteen
thousand prisoners are now employed in those states which
continue to make goods for sale in localities which do not
prohibit their marketing, and that another forty to fifty
thousand prisoners are occupied more or less usefully in
various maintenance tasks about the institutions with a few
thousand employed on farms, road construction and similar
assignments. The prison administrator must now find em-
ployment for the remaining hundred thousand men who,
on account of their character and the nature of the crimes
they have committed, must be kept within the walls of an
institution in the manufacture of articles and commodities
for use in other state institutions and agencies.
IN some states there is very real ground for believing that
such a state-use system will work if further restrictive
legislation is not enacted. The prisoners can manufacture
such things as automobile tags, road signs, clothing for
state wards and school equipment. But already manufac-
turers concerned are lobbying for legislation prohibiting
prisoners from engaging in such industries. The printers,
for instance, have secured laws which make it impossible to
do any printing in a prison. A bill nearly passed last year
in Ohio which would have prevented prisoners from man-
ufacturing any furniture for the school system. Already
Ohio has a law which has shut down the plant formerly
manufacturing paving brick for Ohio highways. Some
groups are opposing the use of prisoners in the construc-
tion even of the buildings in which they themselves are
confined.
The federal government must also be called upon to
assist the states in developing a constructive prison pro-
gram and must aid them in finding the necessary funds to
278
THE SURVEY
reorganize their prison systems. A new type of adminis-
trator must be found, men who are ingenious and power-
ful enough to develop a new penal philosophy. The wise
use of parole must be extended and greater numbers of men
placed in the community under the guidance of under-
standing and efficient probation officers. In advocating the
strengthening and extension of parole and probation one
need not be maudlin about the poor prisoner. It is the only
constructive answer yet found to his problem. Moreover
the ferocity of some of our judges must be mitigated so
that sentences will be less drastic and at the same time more
uniform.
While we are aiming at these distant and somewhat
nebulous objectives we must contrive somehow to solve the
prison labor problem, or else we must abandon the belief
that the prisoner can be released from the institution better
and not worse than when he entered it. Until we have
solved prison labor, we must stop speaking of penology as
if it were a science and stop talking of the prison as a pro-
tection to the public. It is no protection to society to re-
lease into it men whose bodies and spirits are so atrophied
by idleness that they can do nothing but return to crime
as their means of a livelihood. Here is a task and an ob-
jective for the humanitarian, the crusader, the socially
minded who can look tough facts in the face. Horse collars
must leave the prisons; let us not substitute horsefeathers.
Looking Back at the Long Vacation
By CLARA LAMBERT
Associate in Teacher Education, Summer Play Schools, Child Study Association
SEPTEMBER brings the opening of schools all over
the United States. The children are off the streets,
out of empty lots and back in harness. Mothers
breathe a sigh of relief. The children themselves, for the
first few weeks at least, welcome work and routine.
It is time to evaluate what the long vacation has brought
to the millions of children pouring back into the class-
. rooms. Usually this precious period has been only a hiatus
in living. Parents, by and large, work on the theory that
after nine or ten months of regimentation children need
this time to do as they please. Actually most urban parents
have no choice. For, outside of the relatively few play-
grounds, how are city children to spend their time? Few
have resources beyond games in crowded streets — includ-
ing cards and dice — or sheer idleness. Individual agencies in
both country and city, have become concerned about the
destructive results of the sudden sag into summer leisure,
but they have not made use of one of America's greatest
investments — its public school plants. True, they have tried
to provide summer activities for the small number of
children who could be sent to "fresh air" camps, day camps,
playgrounds or parks. But, however helpful these efforts
have been, statistically they have not been consistent or
numerous. Despite the development of recreational facilities
in the depression, the summer still means empty school
buildings, unemployed teachers, children with leisure but
with no technique for using it, and parents in homes with
limited facilities. The conclusion is a sad one — that rela-
tively only a very few children have had a summer enriched
by vital activity.
The summer play schools committee of the Child Study
Association of America for the past twenty-one years has
been trying to determine what is the most profitable kind
of summer for young children. Its efforts, and those of
other groups similarly experimenting, point the way to a
possible solution.
The summer play schools committee was organized dur-
ing the War, when many mothers were working while
fathers were in the army. Children in underprivileged
neighborhoods were then more neglected than ever. They
had no play places and no homes. A group of interested
women set themselves to meet the problem. In the original
play schools of New York City the settlements provided
the school centers, the board of education supplied some
teachers, and other social agencies gave additional help.
Today there are added to the list public service companies
that furnish transportation for trips and excursions; mu-
seums and libraries that open their doors, and WPA and
NYA assistants. The combined efforts of the committee
and these agencies have now made possible the development
of all-day summer play schools in New York City.
The children who made up the first summer play groups
knew schools as places in which to learn reading, writing
and arithmetic. They knew settlements, for in the crowded
quarters of the large cities these institutions had long offered
children after-school opportunity for recreation and social
life. They knew playgrounds, some of them, as places to
use apparatus, play games and learn handicrafts. But the
play school was a new concept. They came to it at nine in
the morning and stayed until four-thirty in the afternoon.
In groups of twenty-five children of the same age, they
played, worked, and learned new ways of living with one
another and with adults. The program included lunch, a
rest period, and perhaps a cooling shower or even a swim.
In the settlements, these first summer play schools began
to work out their techniques. To those who have watched
the schools over a period of twenty-one years, it is amaz-
ing to see what has developed.
THERE have been three stages in the development of the
summer play school. To begin with, the committee was
chiefly concerned with the health of children. Summer
groups were kept small. The plan was worked out for
children between the ages of four to thirteen. The workers
devoted much time and attention to physical examination,
rest and nutrition. Lunch became an important educational
and social factor in the play school routine. Here many of
the children for the first time ate vegetables and drank milk.
Here too, they were introduced to the simple social rites
associated with meal time. This was the most complete meal
of their day, often the only one.
Paralleling its work with children, the summer play
schools committee through meetings and conferences insti-
tuted what we call today parent education, helping the
mothers in their home problems as well as in their parent-
child relationships.
As health measures became accepted routines in play
school, the interest of the committee extended itself. The
SEPTEMBER 1937
279
summer play schools naturally drew on the new ideas in
recreation and the play skills. The best leadership avail-
able was obtained, in trying to develop a wholesome, ac-
tive program adapted to the age and interest of the children.
About the same time that the summer play school move-
ment was developing, the progressive school movement was
gaining momentum. Small laboratory schools had sprung
up, in which carpentry, painting, clay modelling, printing,
cooking, singing, dancing, games, trips and academic work
were all woven into a meaningful pattern, motivated by
purpose and use.
THE trends in summer play schools began to reflect the
influence of these new schools. Projects were intro-
duced, and many a Dutch house and Indian village flour-
ished in a play school classroom. The day was fairly well
divided between games and projects, both indoors and out.
As the summer play schools grew, the committee found
it necessary to institute a special training course for its
teachers, with a demonstration school. Here a .private
agency, rather timidly and modestly, entered a field which
was not strictly speaking its own — the field of education —
in an effort to help solve the year-round problem of the
underprivileged child. Private organizations, I suppose,
have always been the catalytic agents for big movements,
and perhaps that is one of their chief functions.
As the work committee of the Child Study Association
went forward problems arose — some as yet unanswered.
The most urgent is the question: what should a play school
ideally offer children who cannot leave their communities
for the summer? Growing out of this is the question: how
shall teachers be trained to meet children's needs? Finally,
how can schools, playgrounds, welfare agencies and or-
ganizations interested in the complete development of the
child cooperate in bringing about a twelve-month program
of education with a flexible, unregimented, vacation plan
for more than 30 million children? Playgrounds in 1932
served fewer than 2 million children; camps, private and
public, 1,682,907. The figures may vary for 1937, but the
proportion remains almost the same.
Only those workers who have dealt with city children
will believe that youngsters no longer know how to play.
Children today are more inclined to be amused than to
play. Anyone who spent his childhood in a small town
knows how packing cases were converted into houses or
castles, trains or theaters; knows, too, how readily all the
neighborhood comedies, tragedies, and humdrum work were
recreated by the children: playing house, grocer, fireman,
doctor and so forth. The kind of play that used to take
place in empty lots and back yards is practically extinct in
the large cities, where almost all the open spaces are park-
ing areas for cars, not for children. Even such games as
Prisoner's Base; Run, Sheep, Run; and so on had more life
values than Hop-Scotch, or jump rope, which are almost
the only games for young children possible today on city
streets.
People point with pride to our very youthful tennis
champions, swimmers, sailors and golfers. It is true that
athletic activities have been extended beyond the leisure
.class group to the masses, but athletics have not solved the
summer problem even for older children. One cannot play
tennis, swim, play baseball all day. The summer is hot and
enervating. Even camps use their outdoor time judiciously.
Play schools must do the same.
A summer program all "games," or all "projects," is not
well balanced. There is a summer mood that must be reck-
oned with in carrying out a vacation scheme for all
children. In one of the summer play schools a group whose
teacher came from a famous progressive school began the
summer with a group newspaper and ended with a "show."
Half of the group were Negro children. They knew how
to dance and sing, they were eager to do something together,
but they wanted to have something to say about their va-
cation activities. They organized into groups, to work on
scenery, programs, dialogue and "routine." It was a far
cry from the school as they knew it, but it was close to
education.
In another school the children decided to do a small sized
Middletown study. Armed with 25-cent cameras they went
forth every afternoon to take snapshots of their community.
They developed their pictures and pasted them into an ef-
fective pattern.
In some of the schools the children wanted more out-
door time. Empty lots were found for them in the lower
East Side, where tenements had been demolished. They
were not opened to the children until there was adequate
equipment — not just slides and swings, but large, sturdy
packing cases, small wooden horses, planks, big hollow
blocks, wagons, pails and shovels. The children played here
every day, until the sun drove them indoors, or until lunch
and rest beckoned them as a welcome recess. Real play
emerged as soon as suitable place and materials were made
available.
Teachers learned that in addition to play, children*
crave opportunity to do things with their hands. This im-
perative urge may be a left-over from artisan forbears, but
whatever its origin, many a boy and girl was made happy
using hammers, saws, nails and wood, as well as paints,
clay, needle and thread. -The impulse to "do something"
made teachers abandon the verbal approach in extending
children's horizons and adapt themselves to the reality —
summer play.
THE committee watched play schools grow from health
motivated institutions to schools devoted to social,
emotional and recreational aspects as well. They had in-
stituted teacher training, worked with community
agencies, watched children grow. Now they saw that new
attitudes toward the summer must be articulated. The pro-
gressive school had contributed knowledge of constructive
play. The recreational movement contributed games and
crafts. And now the great leisure time movement is de-
manding useful time expenditure for all members of the
community, which means that the public school buildings
must be kept open during the summer, with playgrounds
available to children and to adults; and deskless rooms for
play space. It also means that teachers must be trained for
leisure time teaching in summer and after-school hours as
well, and that educators must recognize summer needs of
children and parents.
Signs of this trend are the activity programs in the win-
ter schools, after-school programs in a few schools, and the
growing recognition that an all-day summer play school,
with lunch and rest, is necessary for young children. A
national summer program, with room for experimenting in
work and play for the children who need it and choose it,
is the ultimate step in making our schools all-year-round
institutions rather than the part time agencies they are
today. Probably in time the schools will provide integrated
education for our children.
280
THE SURVEY
Standard of Living
By SELDEN C. MENEFEE
Department of Sociology, University of Washington
WHAT is the American standard of living? Psycho-
logically, it means for most of us what we would
all like to have — a nice home and a car, a savings
account, and enough leisure for travel and play. Some tens
of thousands of Americans, asked by the American Insti-
tute of Public Opinion how much income per week a fam-
ily of four needs merely to live decently, gave as their
median reply $30 a week, or $1560 a year. In the South
they said $25 a week would be enough, but on the Pacific
Coast the estimate was $35. A supplementary estimate of a
"health and comfort" yearly budget showed an average of
$1950 considered necessary.
The U. S. Department of Labor agrees quite closely
with this poll. According to its estimates, approximately
$1200 a year for a family is necessary for "subsistence,"
and $2000 for "minimum health and decency." Our old
ideas of the American living standard are knocked into a
cocked hat when we realize that in 1929, 42 percent of
our population had an annual family income under $1500
and 77 percent under $2000. In 1932, these figures had
changed to 59 percent and 88 percent respectively. Nine
out of ten did not have the minimum for "health and de-
cency."
The Brookings Institution says that nearly six million
families, or one fifth of the national total, earned less than
$1000 even in 1929. According to the Cleveland Trust
Company, the bottom 20 percent of our population drew
only 4.3 percent of the nation's income in 1929.
Most of these figures have been quoted to us over and
over again during the depression. Now, just when we are
beginning to get back some of the illusions we had in the
nineteen-twenties, along comes a report by the Division of
Social Research of the Works Progress Administration to
set us to thinking again. (Intercity Differences in Costs of
Living in March 1935, by Margaret Loomis Stecker, Pre-
liminary Report, WPA Division of Social Research, Wash-
ington, 1937. 193 pp.)
Industrious WPA workers gathered more than 1,430,000
price quotations in fifty-nine different cities in all sections
of the country. Two standard budgets were set up — one at
the maintenance level, representing the minimum of cur-
rent outlay necessary for supporting the families of indus-
trial, service and other manual workers; the other at an
emergency level, taking into account certain economies that
may be made temporarily during a depression period. Both
budgets are for a family of four — a man, a woman, a boy
of thirteen, and a girl of eight.
Some aspects of the maintenance budget reveal the hard-
ships it would entail. The man in the mythical family
is a laborer, yet he is furnished with only two cotton work-
shirts and one woolen one a year. The "woman in the
home" is allowed one and one half dresses of silk or wool
material, six pairs of cotton stockings and two of silk.
Although the maintenance budget allows one movie show
a week for the family, there is no provision for giving the
children a higher education. The only provision for sav-
ings is a life insurance policy for $1000. Twenty cents a
person a month is allowed for fraternal or patriotic soci-
ety dues, but nothing for union dues. No provision is made
for an automobile, which has become a psychological as
well as a transportation necessity, even among laboring
families in many places.
The housing minimum requirement is one room a per-
son, with indoor bath and toilet. The report comments :
"Working class housing in general is so poor in some cities
that to get reports of rents for accommodations meeting
the specifications it was necessary to price dwellings not
customarily occupied by industrial, service and other man-
ual workers of small means."
The report itself admits that neither the maintenance
nor the emergency budget represents a desirable standard:
"Neither level will permit families to enjoy the full fruits
of what we have come to call the American standard of
living. Indeed, those forced to exist at the emergency level
for an extended period would be subjected to serious health
hazards."
THE average amount needed for the maintenance level
was $1261 in March 1935; corrected for prices in
March 1937, it was $1317. The average for the emergency
level was $903. The indictment of our present social situ-
ation comes when we compare actual conditions with these
figures, low as they are. According to Isidor Lubin of the
U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a large percentage of
working class families in these cities — in some cases more
than half — had total incomes of less than $1250 in 1935-36.
The WPA minimum wage of $55 a month, or $660 a
year, is proved to be inadequate when it is compared with
the $903 yearly emergency minimum set up by the research
division of the WPA itself. The average income of Ameri-
can families last year, according to the U. S. Department of
Labor, was about $1300, with nearly a third having less
than $1000. Here is the third of our nation which Presi-
dent Roosevelt declared to be ill-clad, ill-housed and ill-fed.
One of the most significant results of the survey is the
death blow it deals to the myth of great differentials be-
tween living costs in the North and the South. The aver-
age maintenance cost in cities of the Middle Atlantic, where
costs were highest — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
— was only $117 above the average cost in cities of the
East South Central States — Kentucky, Alabama, Missis-
sippi, Tennessee — where costs were lowest. Correcting for
the smaller size of southern cities, the difference actually
falls to about 3 percent. Four large southern cities fall in
the top half of the scale — Washington, D. C. (which heads
the list at $1415 for the emergency level), St. Louis, Bal-
timore and Atlanta.
True enough, Mobile foots the list with a maintenance
cost of $1129 per family, but even this is insufficient basis
for the wage differentials as between North and South.
In the lumber industry, for example, the minimum wage
set by the woodworkers' union in the Pacific Northwest is
62^/2 cents an hour, while in some southern states workers
in the same industry are paid 20 cents an hour. Obviously
the wage differential between North and South rests, not
on differences in prices, but on the fact that unorganized
SEPTEMBER 1937
281
southern workers eat turnip greens, corn pone, and salt
pork, and have a corresponding standard of housing, cloth-
ing, recreation, education and medical care.
The real differences come with size, rather than location
of the city. But there is no uniformity in individual prices
even among cities of similar size. Rents are highest in Wash-
ington, D. C. and food is highest in Albuquerque, Bridge-
port and New York City; while Butte, San Francisco,
Spokane, Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis top the list in
clothing prices. Differences that loom large in particulai
categories tend to cancel each other, with the result that
the most extreme range in the totals is only slightly over
20 percent. In more than half the cities, the cost of the
maintenance level was between $1200 and $1300 a year.
Yet, low as is the standard set in these budgets, some-
thing over one third of our population does not have an
income sufficient to attain even this minimum standard of
living.
Certain employers and business organizations will utilize
this report for their own ends. The maintenance budget
may be used to justify wages at the prevailing level, in spite
of its obvious inadequacy. Regional differences in prices of
certain articles will be cited to justify wage differentials in
the South, although the total amount of the budget varied
little from North to South. Special interests will also find
some of the detailed figures useful. In Seattle, rents are
very low because of the comparatively scattered residential
areas. Yet apartment house owners (which means mortgage
companies in a great majority of cases) have already seized
upon the higher rent prices of other cities as a justification
for wholesale increases in their rates.
The WPA report will be most useful, however, to those
who realize that our "American" living standard is very
un-American indeed. Here is abundant ammunition for
those who are working for minimum wages, public hous-
ing, and other legislation to benefit the minority — or ma-
jority— of our population which cannot, today, maintain
even a "minimum" standard of living.
A Relief Agency Plays the Market
By BENJAMIN GLASSBERG
Superintendent, Department of Outdoor Relief, Milwaukee County, Wis.
BEFORE the rising tide of prosperity washes out
the memory of all the unconventional procedures
developed under the stress of emergency relief, I
make haste to recount a unique activity of the Milwaukee
County Department of Outdoor Relief. This department
played the stock market for the benefit of its clients, and
what is more, came out on the winning side.
On April 27, 1933 one John Figgis, having exhausted
the little money he had in the bank, applied for relief. He
was a chemist with a good record in a laboratory where he
had worked for many years. When the firm went out of
business he was laid off. At the end of seven months of un-
employment he had used practically all his savings, had
sold his 1930 Ford and had borrowed on his insurance.
When he came to the relief department asking for food,
he had not a thing left that he could turn into money with
the exception of twenty shares of common stock of the
Blank Manufacturing Company, a major agricultural im-
plement firm. Under the law in most states, no one is en-
titled to relief who has any means whatsoever. As a rule
he is required before receiving relief to take the so-called
pauper's oath; that is, to swear that he has no means and
that he has used up his very last dollar.
On the day John Figgis applied for relief his stock in
the implement company had a value of $12.25 a share. He
was, therefore, possessed of a considerable asset since his
twenty shares could have been sold for $245. He had paid
$800 for them only a few years before. Strictly speaking
these shares made him ineligible for relief, but because it
seemed unreasonable to insist on his selling the only asset
he had at a time when the market was so low, a bargain
was struck with him. He agreed to assign his shares to the
relief department with the understanding that when the
price of them went up they would be sold and the depart-
ment repaid for the relief expenditure it had made for him.
Of course, if the price went down the department would
be the loser. John Figgis himself was staking nothing on
the deal, for if forced to sell he quickly would consume the
resulting cash. However if the price went up both he and
the department stood to gain.
From April 1933 until a year ago John Figgis received
relief more or less continuously. He then got a WPA job.
His stock in the meantime advanced to $77 a share and its
total value now is $1540, or approximately $1300 more
than on the day when he assigned it. By selling it he now
is able to give up his WPA job, repay the $600 worth of
relief which he has received and have left a balance of $940
to tide himself over while looking for a regular job.
AVD there was George Husik who applied for relief on
February 19, 1934. Mr. Husik, close to fifty, with a
family of seven children, had been a laborer with a large
construction company. When building operations de-
creased, he was laid off and after a period on CWA was
forced to apply for relief. His only income was $10 a month
from a lodger in his home. He had no savings, but he did
have ten shares of paid-up stock in a building and loan as-
sociation, for which he had paid $1000 though the market
value at the time he applied was only $350. Strictly speak-
ing, he was not eligible for relief, since the $350 which he
could have realized by selling his shares would have enabled
him to maintain his family for a few months. Mr. Husik,
however, was much opposed to disposing of his stock at
such a low price, and the relief department did not insist
on it, providing that he would agree to assign the shares.
The Husik family received complete relief, with the excep-
tion of rent — they owned their home — until February
1935, when one of the daughters secured a job. Her wages,
added to the monthly $10 from the lodger, enabled the
family to take care of its own needs and to go off the relief
rolls. Not until August 1936, was Mr. Husik willing to
sell his building and loan stock, a transaction in which
he received $745. After repaying the department the sum
of $275 for the aid which he had received while on relief,
he had $466 remaining. Had he been required to sell his
shares in February 1934, he would have been able to pro-
282
THE SURVEY
vide for his own needs, but would not have now that com-
fortable little nest egg.
One more story of how a family with frozen assets was
helped, to its eventual advantage as well as to that of the
taxpayer. August Schmidt is a man of middle age, father
of two children. A salesman for many years he had done
fairly well during the boom days, owned his own home and
enjoyed some income from it. Early in the depression he
lost his job and finally his home. On March 31, 1932 he
was obliged to apply for relief. The family still had one
asset, a half interest in a rather valuable piece of real es-
tate, left to Mrs. Schmidt at the death of her mother. On
account of the sharp shrinkage in real estate values, this
property, had its sale been forced, would have yielded only
a few hundred dollars. To avoid this sacrifice of a tangible
asset the department agreed to extend relief if Mrs.
Schmidt would execute a lien in favor of the county, as
security for the funds expended. In August 1936, Mr.
Schmidt found a purchaser for the property at a price far
in excess of that offered in 1932 and Mrs. Schmidt re-
ceived $2000 as her share of the estate. She repaid $550
to the county and, with nearly $1500 available for the
family, went off relief. Had this property been sold in
1932 the family might have got by until Mr. Schmidt
found a job, but certainly it would not now have any-
thing to show for its one asset.
THESE cases are not isolated. It was a multiplication
of them that led relief officials in Milwaukee County
in a manner of speaking to play the stock market. Although
we were helpless to provide that which people needed most,
jobs, it seemed wrong to insist on their sacrificing build-
ing and loan shares, real estate, stocks in reputable cor-
porations, and "gilt edged" bonds, then being hysterically
dumped on a falling market. In each case these assets rep-
resented many years of slow and careful saving by people
who were not professional stock market gamblers, buying
today and selling tomorrow for a quick profit. The securi-
ties in most instances had teen in the possession of these
families for years. Now they had shrunk to nothing or to a
pitiable fraction of their former value. Yet armed with the
might of the law, we could insist that they be sold for
whatever they would bring, thus keeping the families off
the relief lists at least for awhile. It would be legal, but
it seemed a short-sighted and demoralizing thing to do.
After long, case by case consideration the relief depart-
ment decided that it would take a chance on a recovery in
values. It believed, in spite of the thick gloom that per-
vaded all industrial activity in the fall of 1932, that an
upturn was bound to come. We would take these assets off
the hands of the applicant for relief and hold them as long
as it seemed wise. When the stock or other asset had ap-
preciated in value, the client would be free to sell, pro-
vided he repaid the county for the relief he had received.
How this operated is illustrated by the experience already
cited. Had John Figgis, for example, sold his implement
shares for $245, he would have required $365 in addition
in direct relief to carry him over. The relief agency would
have been out by that amount. By not insisting on his sell-
ing, the relief agency instead has been reimbursed for all
the relief granted and the client himself has left $940.
Certainly not a bad bargain.
Many and varied were the obstacles and problems to be
overcome before the securities division began functioning.
There were legal ramifications to be clarified, forms to be
prepared, an accounting system to be agreed upon by the
corporation counsel and the manager of county institu-
tions, proper audit controls established to the satisfaction
of the county auditor, safety boxes to be rented for the safe
keeping of the various valuable documents, and a group
of employes, all of whom are bonded, to be specially
trained to handle the many intricate financial details in-
volved. By December 1932, the plan was launched. The
routine was so carefully worked out and the safeguards so
satisfactory that from the start it functioned smoothly.
Before long its services were extended to include assign-
ments of old age pensioners who are required by law to
assign all their assets to the county, as well as those of
patients receiving care at the county institutions, who were
not eligible for free care.
IT should be understood that relief was not refused if
clients were unwilling to assign assets of small market
value. When assets were readily marketable and the amount
involved in any sense substantial, judgment on granting or
not granting relief had to be exercised wisely. In the great
majority of cases, after the matter was explained to the
applicant, he readily saw the justice of the department's
position and agreed to an assignment. Under the law of
the state, a homestead or insurance policies which had a
cash or loan surrender value of $300 or less could not be
assigned. These limitations, however, did not apply to as-
signments made by recipients of old age assistance also
handled by the department.
After the assignment of an asset, frozen or otherwise,
the department takes precautions to safeguard its value,
keeping up premiums on insurance policies or the pay-
ment of taxes and interest on real estate, as would be done
by the trust department of a bank. In no case is the asset
liquidated without the consent of the relief client. When a
marked appreciation has occurred and liquidation is war-
ranted, the client is advised to take the proper steps and
to clear his account. From December 1932, to July 1937
a little over $300,000 worth of assets of various sorts have
been assigned to the department by some 1700 applicants.
Close to 450 families have thus far liquidated their assets
and have reimbursed the county in full for the relief they
received, a matter of $53,000. In addition they had left
an appreciable sum for their own use. Assignments dur-
ing the same period by old age pensioners, totalled close to
$800,000, most of it consisting of insurance policies.
Naturally during the last year, as a result of the im-
provement in the market for real estate, building and loan
shares, and stocks and bonds generally, fewer and fewer
clients who apply for relief have any assets that are still
in the frozen state. There is, therefore, less need for this
service from the relief department. Assets that are still in
the hands of the department consist largely of building
and loan stock, "gilt edged" realty bonds, and unlisted
stocks and moneys tied up in closed banks. As these values
increase the liquidating process will continue, so that
eventually all marketable securities will be disposed of and
many relief accounts closed, to the mutual advantage of the
owners and the relief department.
The services of the securities division to the county court,
which administers the old age assistance law, and to the
county institutions, however, have continued to increase so
rapidly that it has been decided to establish the division as a
separate department, under the direction of the manager
and board of trustees of county institutions.
SEPTEMBER 1937
283
Charity Racketeering
By KATHRYN CLOSE
THE depth of "low life" has been personified for
centuries by the thief who steals from the beggar.
But the twentieth century has gone the past one
better and through modern organization has integrated such
infamy into a meaningful whole, the sinister, far reaching
operations of a charity racket.
Since many well intentioned persons seem willing to give
money to almost anything put before them as "a worthy
charity," it no longer is necessary to rob the poor. By up-
to-date organization it is possible to get the well-meant
money at its source. The poor never have a chance to be
robbed of it.
Large cities offer the lushest ground for the charity
racketeer, New York probably the lushest of all because
of a little clause tucked into its Code of Ordinances which
exempts religious bodies from securing permits for the public
solicitation of funds for charitable purposes. Designed to
protect traditional practices of wholly estimable religious
organizations the clause in effect has opened the door of
opportunity to wolves in sheeps' clothing. Under it high
pressure rackets developed with their takings adding up
to really important money. It has taken a long and hard
fought campaign to break them up and to land their leaders
in jail. William Hodson, commissioner of public welfare,
has announced that with the trial and conviction of thir-
teen leaders of three gangs charity racketeering in the city
has ended. He did not add "for good."
What Mr. Hodson meant was that the three largest
gangs practicing this lucrative business had been convicted
and incarcerated, a definite accomplishment considering
the wily cleverness of these, the most elusive of racketeers.
Consider the difficulty of clamping down on a man whose
eyes are lowered in piety while at that very moment his
hired telephone salesmen, representing themselves to be
judges, public officials, now and then even the mayor or
the governor, are busily at work soliciting funds for the
"split."
The latest type of charity racketeering is efficient, well
organized, profitable and not too dangerous since it is
minus gun play. The three gangs now broken up — The
United Relief Association, the Gates of Mercy, and the
Charity Church of Christ — were reputed to have taken over
$8000 a week. The "charity" performed by any of them in
a gesture of keeping within the law was negligible, only a
necessary operating expense.
More important as an operating expense were the tele-
phone salesmen, some of whom made on an average of
$125 a week in commissions. These men considered them-
selves "professionals" and were employed first by one gang
and then another. Each salesman had his notebook list of
"taps" or "suckers," known to be easy marks for telephone
solicitation. Alongside the names were illuminating com-
ments: "This guy falls easily for the sick child gag," or
"Nuts on crippled children or veterans."
During the past year more than 300 of these telephone
professionals are said to have been operating in the city
at one time. Their calls were made from "boiler rooms" —
rented offices with many telephones. In these "boiler rooms"
imagination ran rampant. A salesman represented himself as
anyone who might impress the prospective contributor —
only the President of the United States seems to have been
unrepresented, but this may have been a mere oversight.
The "appeal" of these gifted gentlemen is for almost
anything that might conceivably touch the emotions of the
person at the other end of the wire, plus a certain seasonable
element — in winter coal for a poor widow, in summer an
outing for little crippled Willie. Always, however, the need
is so urgent and immediate that it cannot wait a day, even
an hour. "A messenger will call at once for your check.
Thank you and God bless you."
The messenger hops out for the check, the telephone
boys get their percentage and the master minds their split,
and what the poor widow and little Willie get is nobody's
business.
Although the thirteen recent convictions effectively broke
up the Charity Church of Christ, the United Relief Asso-
ciation, and the Gates of Mercy only five of the men con-
victed were telephone salesmen. It is depressing to think of
the hundreds of telephone salesmen who must be out of
jobs. It is more depressing to think that they may not be
jobless long. The ease with which the Religious Incorpora-
tion Law enables individuals to come together to form a
religious corporation, and the city ordinance which exempts
such a corporation from securing a permit for the solicita-
tion of funds, constitute almost an invitation to the unprin-
cipled. Call a tumble-down shack in the country a camp
(the "camp" of the Gates of Mercy was closed by the
Board of Health because of unsanitary conditions) or hand
out some bread and soup once in a while and everything
is within the law — that is, everything but the misrepresen-
tation over the telephone.
TODAY'S charity racket is the illegitimate child of
methods developed during and after the World War
when super-salesmanship and sentiment were found to be a
magic formula for opening the American pocket book. It
grew out of the activities of unscrupulous promoters who
undertook to raise money for anything at all, taking their pay
in a percentage of the sums raised, a practice long repudi-
ated by reputable social agencies. These promoters usually
attached themselves to obscure organizations in need of
funds and in the beginning were content with perhaps 20
percent of the money collected. But as the "profession"
grew so too did the percentage. In 1931 the promoter of a
drive for a little known "home" took 87 percent of the con-
tributions. Eight percent was charged to overhead ; the
"home" got 5 percent.
Presently as the "profession" prospered sharps appeared
who did not trouble to attach themselves to any existing
agency; they simply made up a good name, preferably near
enough like that of a reputable organization to mislead
the thoughtless, and went to work. For example there was
a woman who for a time netted herself a thousand dollars
a month in the name of the wholly non-existent Jobless Act-
ors Relief Association. When reputable actors' organizations
"made trouble" for her she turned her attention to raising
284
THE SURVEY
money for what she called "The Actors' Memorial Fund,"
to build a monument of sorts on Long Island. Expensive
stationery carried an impressive array of names of well-
known actors. At the top of the list was the large-lettered
word CONTRIBUTORS. Scarcely anyone would notice
below the tiny type spelling "to Helen Morgan's book."
Helen Morgan's book is a collection of epigrams contributed
by famous actors. Needless to say this enterprising lady
ran into more "trouble" and the monument was never
heard of again. But it was a good idea and highly remunera-
tive while it lasted.
A FAVORITE soliciting racket was supported by spuri-
./Y. ous civil service groups. Selling tickets for a never-to-
take-place firemen's ball by a never-had-been fireman was
typical. One man posing as a veteran fireman collected
$1100 on $1 subscriptions for a drawing on an oil painting.
There was also an "annual ball for the benefit of ambu-
lance drivers." No one ever heard of the ball or any am-
bulance driver of its benefits, but ticket sellers dressed in
uniforms faintly suggestive of those worn by ambulance
drivers canvassed office buildings for years before they could
be stopped.
Not till 1921 was there an official attempt legally to
curb fake soliciting in New York. After being harassed
by complaints about the Timely Service Society which
sent its "representatives" to subways, elevated stations
and other public places to collect money for a purpose as
vague as the organization's name, Bird S. Coler, the then
commissioner of public welfare, took the lead in securing
an ordinance requiring the issuance of an official permit
by the Department of Public Welfare for the public solici-
tation of funds for charitable purposes.' The ordinance
became effective in December 1921. It provides for a
maximum penalty of 90 days imprisonment or a fine of
$500 or both. In the past the courts have usually imposed
fines which the racketeers paid, charged off to overhead
and then went about their business. One man was arrested
five times in a year for operating without a permit. In
1925 Mr. Coler estimated that 50 percent of the public
soliciting in the city was fake.
In 1928 the ordinance was amended to protect religious
agencies from interference with their religious work. An
innocent looking clause exempting religious corporations
from applying for licenses was welcomed by the racketeers
as a gift from Santa Claus. No more bothersome fines.
A new field opened up. The racketeers turned to the garb
of religion.
Thus, when William Hodson promised Mayor La
Guardia in 1935 to rid the city of charity racketeers, he
found himself faced with the task of breaking up several
well-organized gangs which were operating under the
cloak of religion and to all appearances within the law.
In some cases the leaders even gave themselves religious
titles. "Father" Michael Dilelsi of the Charity Church of
Christ called himself on occasion no less than bishop. Oth-
ers were "rabbis" and "reverends," although it is doubtful
if any of them ever saw the door of a theological school.
Operating with these pious gentlemen were the networks
which were manned by squads of glib professional telephone
salesmen.
Commissioner Hodson went about the task in the most
modern method of gang-hunting — close interdepartmental
cooperation. The petty offense of soliciting without a per-
mit had disappeared, clearing the air so that the real offense
— obtaining funds through misrepresentation — could be
more clearly seen. It was this charge which the Department
of Public Welfare, the Police Department and the District
Attorney's office set out to prove, and which ultimately they
did establish.
Mr. Hodson's only hopes for a racketeerless future are
based on the heavy sentences which were imposed on the
thirteen racketeers who were convicted. That the sentences
had an effect is indicated by the action of the only two re-
maining suspect organizations. One, an East Side bread-
line, went out of business almost immediately; the other,
which was also a downtown organization, began at once
to "lie low."
Means of preventing the recurrence of charity rackets
other than by scaring off the fakers have been suggested, but
without enthusiasm. The opinion seems to prevail that such
frauds are like weeds, bound to crop up again. Herman
N. Levin, Chief of the Welfare Department Bureau of Li-
censes, feels that permits should be required for every type
of solicitation except that made within the walls of the
meeting place of the organization in question. Mr. Hodson
believes that the best policy for preventing future racketeer-
ing is "eternal vigilance." Fortunately the Department of
Public Welfare is itself a barometer of the activities of the
racketeers. Although rackets thrive on public credulity any
new one is bound to bring prompt inquiry to the depart-
ment.
There is some reason for thinking that the high pressure
charity racketeers with their force of telephone salesmen,
scotched in New York, may turn their attention to other
cities where loosely drawn ordinances offer opportunity for
their operations.
IT should be remembered that the fight against rackets is
not entirely up to welfare departments. The public itself
has an obligation to protect its own purse — and to protect
the social agencies of the community. A little wisdom would
go a long way. It is hardly the part of wisdom for a man to
lend his name as a sponsor or director of an organization
about which he knows nothing, as have many prominent
men in the past, to their eventual embarrassment. There
was for example the senator from Massachusetts who re-
sponded willingly to a telegram requesting his sponsorship
for a new statue to the Minute Men of Lexington. With
the use of the senator's name several thousand dollars rolled
in. But the statue remained "a project," for when the time
came to commission a sculptor the money had all gone to
"collection overhead."
Similarly Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public might wisely
lay down a rule or two for themselves : not to respond with
money to telephone solicitations, especially when an offer
has 'been made to have a messenger call for the contribu-
tions; not to be too much influenced by religious titles
claimed by persons unknown to them — such titles are easy
to assume; to take with a grain of salt any telephone
call from a "judge" or from any public official asking for
funds; and to check the authority for the use of prominent
names on the letterhead or on any literature of an unknown
soliciting organization. Reputable social agencies will not
be injured by such precautions on the part of the contribu-
ting public. They welcome inquiries into their methods of
raising funds as well as their activities. Only the charity
racketeer puts on the heat in the face of inquiry. After all,
it would be difficult for any charity racket to prosper with-
out a gullible public.
SEPTEMBER 1937
285
Aunt Minnie's New House
By ALICE E. MORELAND
SHE was sitting in the doorway of her home — an old
Negro woman, bent and wrinkled by time and hard-
ship, but withal a serene figure. As we approached,
her face broke into a smile, and she invited us into her
cheery, neat little four-room cottage. Aunt Minnie, as the
neighborhood knows her, lives in Hopkins Place, one of the
first of the 200 occupied alleys in Washington, D. C., to
be reclaimed by the Alley Dwelling Authority. Aunt Min-
nie has lived practically all her life in this alley, formerly
dark and insanitary, now bright and decent.
Paradoxically, these insanitary alleys, long the plague of
Washington, are the product of the L'Enfant plan. Work-
ing from the broad general scheme of wide diagonal ave-
nues superimposed on a gridiron plan of streets, Major
L'Enfant gave first attention to the size and character of
the squares which this scheme created, each of which re-
quired a rear access of some kind. Hence the interior alleys
which no one in Major L'Enfant's day thought would ever
be inhabited. But for more than a half century before the
Civil War, the owner-occupants of the street lots built
servant quarters and stables in the rear of their property,
and when, after the war, more than 30,000 emancipated
slaves flocked into Washington, numbers of cheap houses
were constructed there to rent to these poverty stricken
folk. As land values rose it was found profitable to erect
brick buildings with minimum sanitary requirements.
These alleys form tiny hidden slum communities in every
section of Washington. Screened from public view as they
are, police protection is extremely difficult.
The social dangers of a large alley population as well
as the dangers due to the bad housing itself were recog-
nized by Congress as early as 1870 when the insanitary
old buildings were condemned and demolished. But the
building of alley shacks continued, although Congress made
sporadic, ineffective efforts to wipe out slum conditions.
Finally in 1934 came the so-called Alley Dwelling Act
which promised a real clean-up of the nation's capital and
provided real slum reclamation. Excerpts of the hearing
before the Senate committee at the time this legislation was
passed indicate the serious nature of these alley slums:
The population of the District of Columbia for the calen-
dar year 1930 was 485,869. Of this number 354,801 were
white and 132,068 colored. The number of deaths from pul-
monary tuberculosis alone during that year was 507, of which
212 were white and 295 colored, furnishing a deathrate of
104.1 for each 100,000 of population. The white deathrate
was 59.7 and the colored 223.4 for each 100,000 of popula-
tion.
The deathrate per 100,000 of population residing in dwell-
ings on the streets in the District for the period named was
98.4 per 100,000 population, while the rate among dwellers
in alley houses for the same period was 467 all colored.
The members of the Alley Dwelling Authority were
appointed by President Roosevelt in October 1934 with
John Ihlder as executive officer. Of the $3 million re-
volving fund provided in the law, $500,000 was available
in November of that year. The Authority made its first
purchase in May 1935. In December 1935, $200,000 ad-
ditional was available and in March 1937, another
$250,000. The federal Housing Act, as finally passed by
286
Congress on August 21, authorizes the President to make
available to the Alley Dwelling Authority such sums as he
deems necessary for its purposes.
Hopkins Place (formerly London Court), the Author-
ity's first housing project, was designed for families with
income from nothing at all up to $100 a month. Some of
the houses it was found could be reconditioned economi-
cally and consistently with a workable plan for develop-
ment ; twelve new ones were erected. All have four rooms ;
eighteen have bathrooms ; some have complete kitchen
equipment ; others have only stoves, sinks with hot and cold
water, and washtubs. All are equipped for electric light-
ing. All the houses face on a central grass plot, and all
have small backyards for service and clothes lines. Sound
construction and simplicity, with provision for additional
equipment should it prove desirable, has been the aim.
Rentals are in line with incomes and range, in the new
houses, from $6.25 to $7.19 per room per month, accord-
ing to equipment. Reconditioned houses rent for $13.55 to
$15.55 per month. The project has been financed on the
basis of breaking even after paying 3 percent interest on
the capital invested. Local taxes and insurance are included
in the rent. Although the houses do not compare in equip-
ment with the projects of the Housing Division of the
Public Works Administration, yet the rooms are bright
and sunny and of good size.
IN addition to the Hopkins Place project, the Authority
has completed an apartment house for Negro families
with incomes "in the range of a beginning grade school
teacher." This is an economic group which suffers serious
overcrowding in Washington. Rentals range from $25 a
month for two rooms to $35 for four rooms. Contracts
have also been let for two other low rent housing projects,
one a twenty-four apartment building, the other a group of
sixteen one family dwellings — a type which the Authority
finds less expensive than the apartment house. Rentals will
be fixed on a non-profit, non-deficit basis, to cover cost of
amortization and 3 percent on invested capital.
Slum properties in ten squares have been acquired and
cleaned, with negotiations in process for four or five more
squares. Six squares have been redeveloped in accordance
with the character of their neighborhoods ; two squares
have been sold ; one to a university for an extension of its
campus, another to a private owner who proposes to erect
a hotel for Negroes. Sites considered inappropriate for
housing are turned to various uses — a repair shop, storage
garages and a parking lot.
This variety of new uses explains the insistence of the
Authority that its program is "slum reclamation" not
"slum clearance." It cannot reclaim these areas that have
become liabilities merely by "clearing" them and leav-
ing them vacant. That, it says, would not only mean a dead
loss, but would invite new abuses and entail community
expense for policing and cleaning. Nor can the Authority
erect low rent housing on all the sites, many of which are
not adapted to housing of any kind.
The problem of land acquisition always has been a
prime difficulty in the way of private improvement of the
THE SURVEY
alleys, since in any given square the property is divided
among many owners. Here the Authority has the advan-
tage over private enterprise, since through the power of
eminent domain it may acquire by condemnation. Its right
to exercise eminent domain in acquiring sites as part of its
program to wipe out alley dwellings in Washington was
upheld last spring by a decision of the U. S. District Court
for the District of Columbia. Thus slum reclamation —
a matter obviously distinct, however, from the provision of
low rent housing — has legally been declared a public use.
Rehousing the alleys' tenants presents a particularly
difficult problem, for the Authority's purchasing power is
limited to the "old city" of Washington, the most expen-
sive area of the District in which to operate. Alleys are
chosen after careful study of housing conditions in the
neighborhood. Families with an income usually find new
living quarters without help. Local relief agencies have
cooperated in rinding new quarters for families that are
dependent on public assistance. The Authority itself has
facilities for helping people find new locations. That these
moves, with few exceptions, have entailed higher rentals
with the attendant necessity in many cases for increased in-
come or assistance, is inevitable not so much because of the
housing shortage as because a good house costs more than a
poor one. The remedy lies in an adequate supply of low
rent houses and, equally, in increased incomes. Continued
clearance of the alley squares without meeting the prob-
lem of rehousing would of course merely create new slum
conditions.
The Authority's main objective is to eliminate slums
and to create permanently good conditions in place of bad
ones, and it aims to do this without incurring a deficit. Since
its first purchase in 1935 it has had a slight profit on its
investment. Of the revolving fund of $3 million less than
a third has been available to date. With these funds used
as capital and maintenance, the real estate transactions are
being worked out to provide sufficient funds to meet the
original investment and enough profit for the necessary
supervision and management.
Aunt Minnie is not the only serene tenant of the Alley
Dwelling Authority. Everyone you talk to in these houses
seems to feel the same way. A little girl told me that for-
merly she never wanted to come home after school, but now
she can't get there fast enough. Perhaps the complete sim-
plicity of these new alley dwellings is not up to the so-
called American standard of tiled bathrooms and radios —
but the people who live in them all echo the woman who,
asked how she liked her new home, said, "It's heaven."
A Million Dollars for Birth Control
DEAR MR. MILLIONAIRE : You told the Atlantic that
your city didn't have any outstanding need; but you're
wrong. I'm only a mountain girl of twenty-three and I've
never been to your city and I've never had a million dollars;
but I know you're wrong. I knew it when I was thirteen.
Our family of nine, father, mother and seven children,
was living in a two-room log house on the Rockcastle River
in Kentucky. I had just won a scholarship at Anneville
Institute, but my mother could not let me go.
"There's another baby coming," she said. "My back
aches all day long, and with all the cooking and washing
and ironing and sewing I've just got to have your help."
"But why," I protested bitterly, "when it's already so
hard to get food and clothes enough to go around do you
go and have another baby? Don't you think we have a big
enough family now?"
I can still see the weary expression on my mother's face
as she answered, "Yes, I've already had more than I wanted,
though at first I was happy when they came. But what can
I do — men being what they are. The doctor told me not
to have any more, but he didn't say what I could do not to."
"I'll never get married," I told her, "or if I do, I'm surely
going to find out how to keep babies from coming so fast."
During the day, while I was hoeing
corn on the hillside, the thought of
"babies and backaches" was continually
on my mind. I resolved that some day,
I'd find out what could be done.
Three years later my mother, who
was only thirty-eight, though she looked
years older, gave birth to her eleventh
child — and died. When you find your-
self at sixteen the foster mother of ten,
the world seems nothing but trying
to find food to fill all the children's
stomachs and clothes to cover their
In its May issue The Survey published
the letter submitted by William H.
Matthews of New York in the $1000
prize contest sponsored by the Atlantic
Monthly for a plan by which a retired
business man might usefully return a
million dollars to the community in which
he acquired it. Herewith it publishes
another letter, which, like Mr. Matthews'
offering, did not win the prize.
bodies. But I never gave up the resolve I first made while
hoeing the hillside, that I was going to find out how to
keep mothers from dying like mine.
Finally a friend made it possible for me to go to a New
York hospital for a nurse's training with an extra year in
the obstetrical wards. I had planned to become a registered
midwife and come back to the mountains. I learned in New
York, though, that mothers really could be taught how to
space their families. I knew that would help them more
than all the care of the best midwives in the world.
So now my dream has come true. Through the Kentucky
Maternal Health League I am now allowed to visit the
homes of our mountain mothers and, at the direction of
Kentucky doctors, to give them contraceptive information.
I wish you could see the expression on these mothers' faces
when I tell them they don't have to have a baby every year.
Some day we expect these homes will no longer be filled
with dirt, unhappiness and puny, unwanted babies.
I'm sure it is the same in your city — too many mothers
weakening themselves and their children by having too
many babies. It's not that mothers don't want children. It's
only that it's bad when they come too fast and mothers
are too weak or haven't enough room or food for them.
So, Mr. Millionaire, I ask you to
dedicate to your city a living monu-
ment. Give to every mother and to
every father the right to have children
when they want them. Give every child
the right to be a wanted child. Train
your doctors. Hire nurses to explain it
to the mothers. It's all so new it takes
some explaining, I've found out. And
do for your 100,000 what I'm trying to
do for Kentucky's mountain mothers.
That million dollars would mean a
lot to them. — LENA GILLIAM, R.N.
SEPTEMBER 1937
787
The Common Welfare
"First Steps"
TITTLE more than a few halting "first steps" actually
I > have been taken thus far by careful Congressmen on
the long, long road to a real survey and measure of unem-
ployment. The many bills relating to such a survey, which
were introduced in both Houses during the recent session,
seem to indicate that Congress desires more fact and less
"blank check writing for relief." But only a somewhat
noncommittal measure providing for an unemployment
census actually was passed. This specifies chiefly that a
census of "partial and total unemployment and occupa-
tions" be completed by April 1, 1938.
The method of census is not set, but present indications
point to a voluntary registration, which would seem to add
little to facts now in possession of the U.S. Employment
Service. Another possibility is a house-to-house canvass.
Under the bill as passed, no one could be required to
answer the census questions. Plans for the census will be
formulated by a committee made up of the Secretaries of
Commerce and Labor, the Works Progress Administrator,
the chairmen of the Social Security Board and Central
Statistical Board, and the Director of the Census.
As Congress adjourned the all too safe repository for
many promising bills which might have produced unem-
ployment studies was the House Labor Committee. Buried
there were the Maverick Bill (H.R. 8180) and the
Murray-Hatch Resolution (S.J. Res. 68) which had
received much social work backing.
The Housing Law
IT seems almost miraculous that housing has actually
reached the federal statute books. However, the Wag-
ner-Steagall Housing Bill has not emerged as the Housing
Act of 1937 without a scar. The act as passed provides
for the issue over three years of guaranteed bonds by the
U.S. Housing Authority, created by the Act, to a total
of $500 million, as against $1 billion in the original bill,
the proceeds to be loaned to state and local government
housing agencies for the provision of low rent housing.
The loans may cover 90 percent of the cost of a project
and extend over a maximum period of sixty years. In
addition, the authority is given an appropriation of $26 mil-
lion (as against $51 million in the original measure) for
operating expenses and to pay subsidies, in the form of
annual or outright grants to local agencies. In either case
the local government must contribute its share, in cash,
tax remissions or exemptions, land, community facilities
or services.
No state may receive more than 10 percent of the entire
funds. Slum units must be demolished in the same number
as new units built, though demolition may be postponed
in case of a housing shortage. Tenants of public houses,
when admitted, must not have family incomes of more than
five times the rent, including utilities, or six times where
there are three or more children. Finally, no unit may cost,
exclusive of land and non-dwelling facilities, over $4000,
or $1000 a room, in cities of less than 500,000; or $5000
a unit and $1250 a room in cities of over 500,000. Urban
figures show that $1250 a room may handicap activity
where the need is greatest, if building costs continue to
mount.
With all the whittling and the crippling amendments,
the new law establishes housing as a public function, but
leaves it to the states and local communities to carry on
under the Housing Act.
Migrant Workers
LTTLE not already made abundantly clear by the for-
mer Federal Transient Program for relief to migrants
and by recent FERA and WPA studies is brought out in
the preliminary report on migration of workers, submitted
by the Secretary of Labor in response to Senate Resolution
298. That makes it no less grim. The summary of tentative
findings paints the outlines of a familiar picture — -workers
who now migrate across state lines are predominantly native
white Americans, the majority of them in family groups,
most of them driven to the road by drought, by the disinte-
gration of farm tenancy in the South, by the necessity of
trying to "eke out a living by piecing together short and
scattered seasons of employment in agriculture and indus-
try." Only rarely does a migrant have the assurance of a
definite job when he "moves on" ; he averages perhaps six
months work a year, with a family income of about $400.
The migrant is largely overlooked in recent security laws.
This new report then is another dispassionate, clear, fac-
tual statement of the problem of migrant labor. It is one
more reminder that studies, necessary as they are, solve no
problems, and that only through national measures can these
migrant Americans hope to achieve a degree of security for
themselves and their children.
End of Round One
FIFTY-TWO marched up Capitol Hill and fifty-two
marched down again. The Social Security Board won
the skirmish, but whose was the victory no one could say.
The board got Senate confirmation for its fifty-two experts
and attorneys rating $5000 or more a year and so preserved
its going organization; the Senate demonstrated its right
to "cooperate" in all Security Board appointments in the
upper and juicier brackets. End of round one.
The bout originated, it will be recalled, in a rider at-
tached to the Independent Offices Appropriation Bill which
required presidential appointment and Senate confirmation
for all Security Board staff receiving $5000 or more per
year. [See The Survey, July 1937, page 224.] Promptly
after he signed the bill the President sent to the Senate the
list of fifty-two of the board's staff affected by the measure,
a list headed by Frank Bane, the executive director. For
more than a month the nominations hung fire while the
Senators "carefully investigated" the qualifications of the
fifty-two, who meantime were getting no salaries.
When the list finally came onto the floor of the Senate,
no objection was raised on the technical qualification of any
one of the fifty-two, but there was a good deal of slightly
naive surprise expressed by certain Senators on discovering
that persons from their own states, "eminently qualified
288
THE SURVEY
from the standpoint of ability and character," were politi-
cally and personally unknown to them.
The Social Security Board saved its non-patronage per-
sonnel and clearly won the first round. But make no mistake,
it has lost its policy. For the rest of the federal fiscal year
any new appointments of experts and attorneys above the
$5000 level must run the gauntlet of the Senate. The impli-
cations are plain even to a political tyro. Thus while the
case of the fifty-two is settled the issue remains and is bound
to re-emerge — the necessity for safeguarding the administra-
tion of the new social services from the patronage machine
and political manipulation.
This is a state issue quite as much, perhaps more, than
a federal one and on it hangs in large measure the success
or the breakdown of the security program from which the
country hopes so much. For in the long run the effectiveness
of this program depends on the capability, regardless of
political coloration, of those who do the hard, long, day-to-
day job. Without the protection of a merit system that
means something, the whole social security scheme may be
discredited by its administration. Technical and professional
services such as these cannot be administered by the patron-
age rule of thumb.
Forerunner
FOR its earliest forebears, the community chest move-
ment looks not to the mature East but to the young
Denver, Colo, of fifty years ago — then just a village swollen
with the "gold rush." Disappointed prospectors and sanguine
seekers for health in the "mile high city" already had pre-
sented Denver with major unemployment and sickness
problems. But Denver had attracted also men of courage
and leadership, among them four young clergymen — a
Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and two Protestant ministers.
In October 1887, they led in the formation of the Associ-
ated Charities of Denver, a crude organization then com-
pared with the modern chest and council movement, but
embodying certain basic principles of the idea of federation
and joint financing.
The history of Denver's Associated Charities (now the
Denver Community Chest) includes successes, discourage-
ments, and a near mortality during the panic of '93. But
by its tenacity and final emergence as a well-organized and
successful chest, it has demonstrated that joint financing is
fundamentally sound and that the worst adversities scarcely
can kill it. The modern community chest movement, cele-
brating its twenty-fifth birthday next spring, may well make
a bow to the honorable record of this predecessor.
A Sorry "Battle"
T ONG suffering New Yorkers presently will be sub-
-L* jected to another "battle of the experts" murder trial
such as fill the thoughtful with despair. A young sculptor,
with a history of mental disease, will go on trial for a con-
fessed triple murder. His attorney has announced that he
is "crazy as a bedbug." The prosecuting attorney's office is
scouring his record for evidences of sanity. Psychiatric ex-
perts will be retained by both sides to testify to the extent
of the accused man's accountability at the time the crime
was committed. The result inevitably will be an orgy of
sensationalism and a fresh revelation of the lack of scientific
or even common sense approach in the criminal courts to the
definition of insanity. As it stands the odds favor the side
which can engage the most "experts."
New York, along with many other states, lacks a clearcut
legal basis for dealing with cases where the principles of
law and psychiatry meet. That such a basis is possible is
indicated by the experience of Massachusetts where a statute,
known as the Briggs Law, provides that:
Whenever a person is indicted by a Grand Jury for a capital
offense ... the Clerk of the Court in which the indictment is
returned shall give notice to the [state] Department of Men-
tal Diseases, and the department shall cause such person to
be examined, with a view to determine his mental condition
and the existence of any mental disease or defect which would
affect his criminal responsibility.
If the competent state authority finds the defendant irre-
sponsible by reason of mental disease or defect he is com-
mitted to an appropriate institution ; if found responsible he
must stand trial.
In Massachusetts the determination of criminal responsi-
bility is an orderly and decent process. There is no public
"battle of the experts" to feed the sensation mongers.
Score for Progress
WATCHING the Goodrich Plan for public assistance
and relief in Pennsylvania as it gets under way [see
The Survey, January 1937, page 10 and July 1937, page
228] a qualified observer writes from the University of
Pittsburgh: "The abolition of the present public relief and
assistance boards . . . scored a decided bull's eye . . . despite
intensive work by poor board officials who saw their jobs and
political influence disappearing. ... It is estimated that the
relief consolidation will cut the cost of its administration
alone at least $2,800,000 a year. ... A step in the right
direction under the act was the appointment of former relief
board director Karl de Schweinitz as head of the new
department. . . ."
And So On
GOVERNOR R. C. Stanford of Arizona announces
that he will not run for reelection. According to an
Associated Press report, his decision is taken chiefly because
the hungry mob of patronage seekers not only make it im-
possible for him "to carry on the work he is pledged to do,"
but even "virtually deprive him of all normal home life."
• • Understatement — or something — by WPA in adminis-
trative order No. 127: "Project workers should not be re-
quired to work under conditions likely to result in death or
serious illness due to sun or heat exposure." • • The bill
creating a federal department of welfare shares the fate of the
measures for reorganization of the agencies of government.
Carrying similar provisions for a welfare department [see
The Survey, July 1937, page 258] both the House and
Senate bills were brought back in a last minute revival of
interest. The House bill passed, but the Senate measure was
caught "pending" when the congressional show broke up in
the August heat. • • New York City has a local law
providing a consecutive eight-hour working day for nurses
and attendants in city hospitals. Internes, not being con-
sidered employes of the hospital, are not affected. • • Dur-
ing 1936 nine persons, all Negroes, were lynched in the
United States, according to annual figures from the Tiis-
kegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Georgia was the
scene of five, or over half of them. But taking the country
as a whole the Tuskegee statistics register a decided gain
over 1935, when there were twenty lynchings.
SEPTEMBER 1937
289
The Social Front
WPA-Relief-WPA
A BOUT 1,500,000 workers have left
the rolls of the Works Progress Ad-
ministration within the last eighteen
months, according to reports from Harry
L. Hopkins, administrator. As tabulated
for the week ending July 17, the remain-
ing workers totalled 1,656,533, com-
pared with a previous high of 3,100,000.
The New York Times quotes Mr.
Hopkins' statement that of those who
have left the WPA rolls, the great ma-
jority have left voluntarily, resigning to
take jobs in private industry. Nothing in
his records from any part of the coun-
try, Mr. Hopkins asserted, upholds re-
ports that reductions in WPA employ-
ment have meant a corresponding in-
crease in direct relief rolls.
Recent state and city reports seem to
indicate another story.
The regular press information bulle-
tins of the Pennsylvania state department
of public assistance, reporting for the
week ending August 14, found an over-
all net increase in the state of approxi-
mately 10,000 relief cases since the be-
ginning of July. During that period the
net increase accounted for directly by
Works Program cuts (relief applications
from released project workers who have
failed to find jobs) was 10,737 cases.
The net increase of 2847 cases attribut-
able to slackened private employment
was more than counterbalanced by the
decrease due to all other factors.
From the Cleveland Community Fund's
service bulletin comes the information
that in June, following WPA layoffs,
clearings at the Social Service Clearing
House increased 30 percent. About one
third of these cases had not previously
been recorded by local welfare services.
The New York City ERB in July and
the first two weeks of August received
applications for home relief from 23,684
relief workers dropped recently by the
WPA. Meantime local WPA adminis-
trator, Brehon Somervell, requisitioned
5000 workers from ERB to maintain his
quota which was cut down faster than
he had anticipated by the discovery on
the rolls of an estimated 18,000 aliens
now subject to dismissal under the Con-
gressional Appropriations Act. Mr. Som-
ervell specified that the newly requisi-
tioned 5000 be drawn "almost exclusively
from those without previous experience
on WPA." This policy is in line with his
previously announced determination to
increase turnover and limit duration of
employment on WPA in order to elim-
inate unemployables and job dodgers
and give impetus to "real" job hunting.
The U. S. Conference of Mayors has
announced completion of a survey of
twenty-five large cities, to "get the facts
regarding what has happened to persons
who have been discharged during recent
months from WPA."
"The data collected revealed that a
large number, in some cases nearly 75
percent, have applied for direct relief
from the local relief agencies," say the
mayors' findings. "This means that dis-
charged WPA workers are not finding
it possible, in the main, to receive pri-
vate employment — at a time when the
prospects for employment should be the
greatest." Cleveland and Columbus,
Ohio report that 75 percent of their dis-
charged WPA workers require relief as-
sistance ; Toledo, 62 percent. Mayor La
Guardia of New York commented, "It is
apparent that the volume of employment
in private industry is not sufficient to
take care of many of those recently dis-
charged by WPA."
Workers Alliance groups from all over
the country arrived in Washington just
before Congress adjourned, asking rein-
statement of all dismissed WPA work-
ers who have been unable to find work.
A statement issued to them by President
Roosevelt pointed to the impossibility of
fulfilling this request within the stipula-
tions of the 1937 Relief Act which re-
quires that its funds be allocated over a
twelve-month period. However, the
marchers were somewhat reassured by
the President's statement that further re-
ductions in WPA were not considered
necessary and that future dismissals
would be made only "for cause." March-
ers disbanded to fight at home for their
goal; specifically to support the Schwel-
lenbach-Allen Bill in case of a special
session of Congress.
Rent Headaches — The rent schedules
of the New York City ERB are gen-
erally inadequate and wholly so in cer-
tain sections of the city and for many
large families, says the ERB in appeal-
ing to the board of estimate for a con-
tingent fund to lessen the rigidity of the
rules. In Harlem the ERB pays rents
higher than in any other part of the city
for accommodations definitely inferior.
More than half of the 20,137 Harlem
cases must pay $8 or more per room per
month and only half of them have baths,
heat and hot water. The Bronx has "the
best housed relief population in the city,"
says the ERB, with three fourths of the
families having baths, central heat and
hot water. Rents are lowest in Brook-
lyn but even there close to half the fami-
lies must pay $8 or more per room. When
families are large and rents high the
gap between the ERB allowance and the
landlord's bill is filled in ways that cre-
ate new problems — debts, malnutrition
and so on. The ERB estimates that not
more than ten thousand families will re-
quire rent supplementation from the pro-
posed contingent fund.
In Time of Strike — When Wallace
Crossley, Missouri State Relief admin-
istrator, ruled that relief would be given
to the families of strikers who were in
need, four members of the St. Louis Re-
lief Committee resigned in protest. . . .
The mayor of Lowell, Mass., has an-
nounced that the city will not at any
time provide relief for strikers since "or-
ganizers of the CIO promised that the
city would not be called upon to tide any
worker over a strike period." ... In De-
troit the United Automobile Workers
appointed a representative who main-
tains contact between the Department of
Public Welfare and the various locals of
the union. Union members needing relief
apply to the union which, through its
welfare committee, investigates the case
and reports with recommendations, to
the agency. These reports are not ac-
cepted as conclusive by the agency, which
makes its own home investigation, but
are of great help in expediting decisions.
Reluctant Hostess — Representatives
of the Los Angeles County, Calif., De-
partment of Charities were in Washing-
ton recently with a pack of troubles des-
tined for the doorstep of Harry L. Hop-
kins, WPA administrator. The drought
and the Ohio Valley floods of last win-
ter have loosed on southern California,
it is said, a stream of indigents that ex-
ceeds that of the low depression years
and that is plainly more than the com-
munity can handle. During the twelve
months ending April 30 last, some 2,-
046,614 persons entered California by
automobile ; three fourths of them
headed for the sunny southern counties.
Most of these latter had migrated from
the drought states and fully three fourths
of them were in immediate need of work,
usually manual labor. This load, the Los
Angeles officials submit, is simply too
much. One out of every five persons in
the county is now on relief in one form
or another, thus creating a situation in-
tolerable for the taxpayer, and for the
normally employed and employable of the
community. In the late twenties the
county's basic tax rate was 80 cents on
each $100 of assessed valuation. Last
year, in spite of federal aid in the form
of WPA, it was $1.27. This year, it
threatens to rise to $1.68.
290
THE SURVEY
The San Joaquin Valley estimates its
dust bowl refugees at close to 70,000.
These people it is said have set up squat-
ter towns of tents and shacks with de-
plorable sanitary conditions. At present
they are following the crops, but with the
advent of winter they will, it is feared,
constitute a relief problem of major pro-
portions.
The Resettlement Administration has
set up two tent cities which accommodate
fewer than 200 families each, and has
four more under construction for the ac-
commodation of families of itinerant
laborers. But this, it seems, is the merest
drop in the bucket in solving the whole
problem.
Record and Report — The Needed
Link Between Unemployment Insurance
and Relief, by William Haber, has been
reprinted from Social Security, 1937.
Published by the American Association
for Social Security, 22 East 17 Street,
New York . . . Proceedings of the Mid-
west Conference on Transiency and Set-
tlement Laws, 1937, are now available
from the Committee on Care of Tran-
sient and Homeless, 1270 Sixth Avenue,
New York. . . . The Roswell Park Pub-
lication Foundation of the University of
Buffalo has published a monograph, Men
on Relief in Lackawanna, by Donald A.
Clarke. The study, made in 1934, con-
cerns unattached, unemployed men, mostly
steel workers. From the university, 3371
Main Street, Buffalo, N. Y.
A comprehensive study of Nine Years
of Relief in Greater Cleveland (1928-
37), charted and tabulated, has been
prepared by Howard Whipple Green and
issued by the Cleveland Health Council.
Price $1 from the council, 1900 Euclid
Avenue, Cleveland.
Public Assistance
DUBLIC assistance news of recent
weeks has centered in Colorado and
Illinois. In Colorado a fight has raged
for months because of the old age assist-
ance amendment adopted by the state,
calling for minimum old age assistance
payments of $45 a month, beginning at
the age of sixty. Illinois is the first state
to suffer suspension of federal social se-
curity funds. At this writing, August 30,
reexamination of the Illinois situation is
scheduled, following conference between
the board and state administrators.
Illinois Troubles — In announcing on
July 30 its first suspension of funds, the
board stated that grants would be re-
sumed if and when the administration
of the old age assistance plan substan-
tially complies with the requirements of
state and federal laws. This action, it
was explained, was taken after an exten-
sive investigation of the administration
of assistance to the aged in Illinois, in-
SEPTEMBER 1937
eluding a hearing of state and federal
officials before the Social Security Board
on July 16.
Since July 1, 1936, when the Illinois
plan for old age assistance became ef-
fective, more than $9,500,000 has been
granted to Illinois by the Social Security
Board to match a similar amount appro-
priated by the state for the care of some
115,000 needy aged persons.
Shortly after the decision to withhold
further grants, the board had a two-day
conference with the officials of the Illi-
nois State Department of Public Wel-
fare. The board pointed out that the
fact that the Illinois plan was not in con-
formity with the federal law had been
repeatedly brought to the attention of the
Illinois officials, and that effective steps
had not been taken to bring the plan into
conformity. At this conference, Illinois
officials reported what was then being
done to correct the conditions which had
led to the board's decision.
Frank Bane, executive director of the
board, issued a statement in which he
said that under the social security act
the board can resume payments to Illi-
nois only when it is satisfied that the plan
is in substantial conformity with the law
and definite progress has been made in
the establishment of procedure which
will insure: proper accounting for ex-
penditure of funds and number of per-
sons assisted; reasonably prompt deci-
sions on applications of individuals for
assistance; a fair hearing before the
state body for applicants whose requests
for aid have been denied; and methods of
administration and supervision which will
give assurance for efficient operation of
the plan.
The board indicated that it is most
anxious not to cause hardship among the
aged in Illinois who are in no way respon-
sible for the conditions but who will
suffer indefinitely if present conditions in
the administration of the program in
"Selected accomplishments" which the WPA has contributed toward the amenities
of life in the United States are emphasized pictorially in a recently released progress
report from the Works Progress Administration. Figures on the chart are as of
September 15, 1936. N indicates new projects; R, repaired or reconditioned.
291
that state are not improved. The board,
therefore, has offered to help state offi-
cials reorganize the administration at the
earliest date so as to meet the require-
ments of the law and to insure equitable
treatment and regular assistance to the
state's needy aged.
Some press comment on the Illinois
situation has charged political back-
grounds to present difficulties and called
this an abuse of the board's power.
Other newswriters have recalled the
strong prejudices of the last Illinois leg-
islature against professional social work-
ers during relief appropriation battles
and the failure of the state to follow up
the study, made by the governor's com-
mission, for reorganization of the Star>:
Welfare Department, recommendations
of which might have avoided the present
tangle. State Welfare Director A. L.
Bowen and his new administrative assist-
ant, John C. Weigel [see page 298]
are conferring with the board over neces-
sary reorganization of public assistance
to meet federal objections. It is believed
that a recently passed state law will ex-
pedite necessary changes.
Colorado All Set— The revised Col-
orado plan for old age assistance, the
approval of which was announced by the
board on August 4, became effective on
proclamation by the governor on Septem-
ber 1.
Delay in the approval of the plan was
caused by ambiguities in the state law
and questions as to its operation and ef-
fect in view of the constitutional amend-
ment. The board's action followed the
receipt of interpretation and assurances
by the governor and the attorney gen-
eral of Colorado.
The social security act provides for
matching of the state's contribution to
the needy individual sixty-five years of
age or over, up to a combined total of
$30 a month. The attorney general ad-
vised the board that although Colorado's
constitutional amendment authorizes the
payment of $45 a month, the state agency
can legally pay less if the state funds
prove insufficient. He also stated that it
would be legal for the state to keep fed-
eral funds in an account separate from
state funds so that federal funds will be
used only as specified by the federal act —
that is, for payments up to a federal-
state total of $30 a month to persons
over sixty-five years of age who are in
need.
In Other States — The Board also has
announced its approval of plans for pub-
lic assistance submitted by Kansas, Min-
nesota and South Carolina, and of re-
vised plans for Florida, South Dakota,
Delaware, Ohio and Utah. Amendments
to the three public assistance plans of
California also were approved. Grants to
states with approved plans brought the
total amount of grants from February 1,
1936, to August 6, to $203,420,426.67.
On the basis of reports received for the
past months, it is estimated that more
than 1,930,000 individuals will receive
cash payments during August under a
total of 123 approved plans.
The Insurances
A SUMMARY of the first two years
•^* of the social security program, re-
leased by the board on August 14, the
second anniversary of the signing of the
social security act, showed that the old
age benefits plan is now in full swing,
with 32,861,069 applications for accounts.
All states and territories and the Dis-
trict of Columbia have enacted unem-
ployment compensation laws, and the
latest estimates indicate that about 21
million workers are employed in jobs
covered by these fifty-one laws. The un-
employment trust fund in the U.S. Treas-
ury on August 1 amounted to $334,114,-
436.85, representing deposits plus the
accrued interest of 37 states and the
District of Columbia. Wisconsin, the
only state which has had a law long
enough to pay benefits, has withdrawn
$1,200,000 from the fund for weekly pay-
ments to qualified unemployed workers.
Age Data — A comparison of social se-
curity account number applications, based
on 11,415,355 cases, with 1930 census
statistics of "gainful workers" showed
that twenty to twenty-four was the age
group having the largest number of
workers in 1930, while the largest per-
centage of applicants for account num-
bers were in the twenty-five to twenty-
nine group. Persons under thirty-five
represented 54 percent of the social se-
curity applicants, as compared with 50
percent of the gainful workers in the
census. Of the social security group, al-
most 14 percent were over fifty, as con-
trasted with 17 percent in the census.
This initial study of applicants also
shows a proportionately higher percent-
age of women than do the census figures.
Change in the Law — Possibility that
the next session of Congress may be
asked to overhaul financing provisions of
the social security program is being con-
sidered by fiscal officials, according to
the Associated Press. The major change
would be drawn to avoid the accumula-
tion of huge reserves. One such proposed
change would limit the amount of the
federal old age reserve account to a few
billion dollars, with benefits payable from
current payroll tax receipts. It is not
suggested that a change will be made in
the reserve plan for unemployment com-
pensation funds. . . . Among recent
amendments to the Michigan unemploy-
ment compensation law are: elimination
of the $6000 deduction on total annual
payrolls, and change of coverage from
employers of one or more to employers
of eight or more; advancing the date
when payments begin from January 1,
1939 to July 1, 1938; providing three new
types of exempted employments — service
performed by insurance salesmen on
commission, part time service where the
worker's occupation during the school
year is attending school (applying main-
ly to newsboys) and employes whose ser-
vice is mainly performed in foreign coun-
tries; insertion of "teeth" for collection
of delinquent contributions; appointment
of an appeal board.
For Railroad Workers — Between
63,000 and 64,000 persons are now on
the rolls of the Railroad Retirement
Board. As a result of reorganization
plans now under way, the board expects
soon to be able to approve 500 claims a
day. To facilitate checking of service rec-
ords, the board has set up four branch
offices. . . . Heads of twenty railroad
brotherhoods, representing more than a
million railway workers are working
out for presentation at the next session
of Congress an unemployment compensa-
tion plan exclusively for railroad em-
ployes. The plan would create a pool
from which unemployed railroaders
would be paid not more than $320 a year.
Payments would amount to half the re-
cipient's salary, up to a maximum of $80
a month, with a minimum of $7.50 a
week. The carriers would pay all the
cost with a 3 percent payroll tax. The
system would be merged with the rail-
road retirement plan and administered
by the Railroad Retirement Board.
Institutes — Better understanding of
the provisions of the social security act
and their administration seems to have
been secured through Social Security In-
stitutes recently held in Region V (Mich-
igan, Ohio, Kentucky). About twenty-
five of these educational programs were
given with an attendance of more than
10,000 persons. The institutes were un-
der the direction of the board's informa-
tional service for the region, which ob-
tained the cooperation of public officials,
civic and labor leaders. It is planned to
hold further institutes in Region V dur-
ing the fall.
Administration — The Arizona Un-
employment Compensation Commission
notified labor unions and other organi-
zations throughout the state of competi-
tive examinations for employment open-
ings under the commission. . . . The
Texas unemployment compensation act
provides that wilful refusal to make con-
tributions to the unemployment trust
fund or to make reports to the commis-
sion can be punished by fines of as much
as $200 or imprisonment for as much as
sixty days, or both, for each offense. The
penalty is in addition to the interest
292
THE SURVEY
charge. ... In many districts where busi-
ness men have been found delinquent in
filing payroll tax returns under the social
security act, it has been discovered that
the majority are small employers who
have confused the provisions of the se-
curity act with the requirements of state
unemployment compensation measures.
Rulings — Clergymen paid for officiating
at funerals do not have to pay social se-
curity taxes on such fees, the Bureau of
Internal Revenue has ruled, though hired
chauffeurs, pallbearers and singers come
under the law. ... In Arizona and New
York tips tucked under the plate for the
waitress come within the scope of the
unemployment insurance laws. . . . Or-
dinary life insurance agents of Kansas
City Life are held to be independent
contractors, and not subject to Titles
VIII and IX of the social security act.
According to The Weekly Underwriter,
this company's contract with its agents
is so closely patterned after the usual
agent's contract that "the decision is
practically a ruling for all life men
throughout the country."
Private Plans — The president of the
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Com-
pany, Ned R. Powley, states that the
company is "watching the new federal
old age benefits program with interest,"
but is "holding tight to its own efficient
program." . . . Socony-Vacuum will con-
tinue its private retirement plan for two
more years, along with requirements of
old age benefits. The company plan was
started in 1903. . . . Interborough Rapid
Transit, one of New York City's sub-
way systems, announces a new private
retirement plan for its employes under
which it "will repay to 12,500 employes
approximately $2 million and for thirty
years will pay $675,000 into a pension
fund, while employes will be required to
make no further contributions." The new
agreement is put forward as an adjust-
ment of the private plan to the federal
social security program. . . . The Central
Hanover Bank, New York City, is
starting an annuity and insurance plan,
effective August 1, covering all regular
employes under the retirement ages of
sixty-five for men and sixty for women.
Costs are shared by the workers and
the bank, but the bank "pays more than
half the future cost and all the accumu-
lated charge for past service."
Labor Trouble — The National Labor
Relations Board has appointed William
Savin, Family Service Association direc-
tor in Washington, D.C., as arbitrator in
the case of William Stumpf and William
Schultz, former employes alleged to have
been discharged by the Social Security
Board for activity in behalf of the United
Federal Workers, a CIO affiliate. The
reinstatement of Harvey Hochman and
David Schutzberger, whose dismissal was
also ascribed by the UFW to organiza-
tion activity, is announced by the union.
Study and Report — Social Security
Board Regulation No. 2 is a pamphlet on
old age benefits, prepared as a guide for
all participants in this program. From
the superintendent of documents, Wash-
ington, price 10 cents. ... In a 600-page
paper bound volume the Social Security
Board has published a summary of the
staff reports to the Committee on Eco-
nomic Security, which paved the way
for the social security act. It includes
a summary of foreign experience with
unemployment insurance, sections on un-
employment compensation in this coun-
try, old age security, security for chil-
dren, provisions for the blind, the ex-
tension of public health services, the
need for federal support of social secur-
ity programs. Copies from the superin-
tendent of documents, Washington, D.C.,
price 75 cents.
Security Abroad
IjMFTY thousand Russian office work-
ers will become eligible for old age
pensions, under a new decree extending
to them old age and disability benefits
previously limited to industrial and agri-
cultural workers.
South Africa — A system of unemploy-
ment compensation has been established
in the Union of South Africa, covering
specified industries. For any of the sched-
uled industries in any area, the Ministry
of Labor and Socjal Welfare may estab-
lish an unemployment fund covering all
persons in the industry in the area, with
certain exclusions. The funds thus estab-
lished are to be administered by manage-
ment committees, made up of equal num-
bers of representatives of employers'
The one hundredth anniversary of the
opening of the first kindergarten in Blank-
enburg, Germany, is being celebrated this
year by the Association for Childhood
Education. Local and nation-wide pro-
1782
1852
FIRST KINDERGARTEN
BLANKENBURG, GERMANY
1837
grams will emphasize the development of
the movement for childhood education here
and abroad. Suggestions for exhibits,
pageants, radio programs, and a study out-
line may be obtained from the association,
1201 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.
and employes' organizations. The funds
are to be built up with contributions by
the members, and a government subsidy
equal to one fourth of the member con-
tributions. A central authority of three
members will supervise the management
of the funds, administer a central unem-
ployment benefit fund into which the
Minister of Labor is to pay from na-
tional revenue, a sum equal to one fourth
of the total contributions of employers
and employes to their several funds.
From this central fund, assistance will
be given to unemployment funds where
it is needed.
British Surplus — The unemployment
insurance fund in Great Britain which
some years ago had a heavy deficit and
was therefore reorganized, is expected to
show a surplus of more than £17 million
in 1936-37. There is a divergence of
opinion as to the use to which this sur-
plus should be put. The trade unions
piopose that the waiting period be abol-
ished, the amount of all benefits in-
creased, and the period of benefit pay-
ment lengthened beyond that allowed at
the present time.
Czechoslovakian Committee — The
Minister of Social Welfare has appoint-
ed a committee to study the question of
the introduction of compulsory sickness,
old age and widows' and orphans' in-
surance for independent workers in
Czechoslovakia. The scope of the pro-
posed scheme is "to make insurance com-
pulsory for all persons exercising an in-
dependent trade and who are liable to
the general tax on trade profits or the
land tax." This means that peasants,
craftsmen, tradesmen and members of
the learned professions will be included
in the proposed plan.
Concerning Children
' I VHE rash of publicity last spring over
child marriages brought action in sev-
eral state legislatures. Minnesota pro-
hibited marriage under fifteen years and
Tennessee under sixteen. Rhode Island
raised the minimum age for girls to six-
teen, for boys to eighteen. Maryland's
new law requires a forty-eight hour no-
tice of intention to wed; New York's,
a seventy-two hour notice. Tennessee re-
quires a three-day notice for girls under
eighteen. States that still cling to the
common law age for marriage — twelve
for girls, fourteen for boys — include
Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi,
New Jersey and Washington.
Therapy by Play — Children suffer-
ing from every type of physical handi-
cap may enter the new Elizabeth and J.
Willis Martin Orthopedic School in
Philadelphia which provides schooling
SEPTEMBER 1937
293
from kindergarten through the entire
eight grades. Covering a block in one
of the city's poorer neighborhoods, the
school was built by the Philadelphia
Board of Education in conjunction with
the Public Works Administration, to pro-
vide the best possible educational facilities
for handicapped children the city over.
Its cost was met from taxes plus a grant
of 45 percent from PWA. It will care for
five hundred children, giving them the
best of skilled services and attractive ap-
paratus for therapy by play, such as heat-
ed swimming pools, equipment for handi-
crafts, domestic science, a print shop and
gymnasium. Treatment rooms include
scientifically constructed exercise devices,
disguised to have the appeal of play ma-
terials. No child capable of educational
training is excluded.
The medical staff includes a physician,
dentists, physiotherapists, and an ortho-
pedic nurse. Seventeen teachers, all spe-
cialists in orthopedic work, and fifteen
trained matrons will care for the
children. This is Pennsylvania's first
complete orthopedic unit.
Hot Weather Retrospect — Grim
old Hoffman Island in New York's
lower bay, long since abandoned as a
quarantine hospital for immigrants, was
turned into a municipal picnic ground
this summer, with city ferry boats to
transport mothers and children for day
outings. The outings included lunch, su-
pervised play, games and music. Various
city departments cooperated, with the
WPA also lending a hand. The city pro-
poses ultimately to develop the ten-acre
island as a playground but thus far red
tape has held up the project.
The New York Association for Im-
proving the Condition of the Poor this
season operated its ten fresh air camps
for twelve weeks instead of eight, pro-
viding outings of an average of twelve
days at seashore or farm, for 2936
children and 610 mothers and aged per-
sons. Since 1883 the AICP has never
missed a summer in sending children to
the country.
The New York Charity Organization
Society used its especially raised hot
weather fund for a dual purpose: first,
to send to the country the 2671 children
in the "trouble filled homes" of COS
clients; and second, to make those homes
more bearable for the people left be-
hind. Part of the fund therefore was
used to move big families into quarters
with more air and space, to provide extra
cots and beds and to supply extra milk
and ice for children and old people.
Following its successful experimenta-
tion of last year, the New York Diabetic
Association again conducted a special
summer camp for diabetic children.
Forty children, patients in various dia-
betic clinics, went to camp in groups of
ten for two-week periods. As one of the
purposes, the camp taught the children
the routines of their own treatment. Last
year all the campers, even the youngest,
learned to calculate their diets, test their
urine and administer their insulin.
Studies — The crippled children's divi-
sion of the U. S. Children's Bureau is
undertaking two studies in relation to the
policies and procedures in state programs
for crippled children. Policies relating to
"intake" or eligibility for care under
state programs for crippled children are
being examined. The second study is
concerned with discharge procedures
from hospitals where children have been
treated.
By taking a sampling of state plans,
the bureau hopes to learn the most sat-
isfactory methods of intake and discharge
and the extent to which medical and
social factors are correlated in work for
crippled children. The studies will be
carried on in the East and Middle West
and will be staffed by medical social
workers, two supervisors, with three as-
sistants each. After analysis of the ma-
terial it is hoped that principles will be
developed to help states in formulating
their programs.
It's a Bureau — By some slip of the
tongue or the typewriter this depart-
ment misnamed, in a brief mention in
the June issue, the new Jewish Children's
Bureau in Chicago, calling it instead
Jewish Children's League. The bureau,
of which Jacob Kepecs is director, is the
result of the consolidation of three well
established agencies, the Jewish Home
Finding Society, the Chicago Home for
Jewish Orphans and the Jewish Child-
ren's Welfare Society. The merger was
effected to the end of better coordina-
tion of existing services and more effec-
tive development of services for needs
now unmet. For the present the bureau
is working through three departments,
child placing in foster families, institu-
tional care and housekeeper service. It
has been designated by the Jewish Chari-
ties of Chicago as its official child car-
ing agency with sole authority to receive
and to deal with applications for the
care of children.
Birth Control
two recent victories in the
bag [see The Survey, February
1937, page 48, and July 1937, page 225]
the American Birth Control League and
the Birth Control Clinical Research
Bureau have joined forces for wider
efforts. The National Committee on
Federal Legislation for Birth Control,
considering its job done, has voted to
dissolve. Those who supported its work
are asked to give their help to a wider
program of national education and re-
search being developed under the aegis
of the new Birth Control Council of
America, coordinating the efforts of the
league and the bureau. Objectives of the
new council are to eliminate overlapping
and duplication, to establish joint stand-
ards and certification of birth control
clinics in America and in general to co-
ordinate activities. Margaret Sanger is
chairman of the new council and Henry
Pratt Fairchild, vice-chairman. Three
members from each group will serve on
the council. Those now appointed in-
clude Mrs. Louis deB. Moore, Drs.
Frederick C. Holden and Eric M. Mats-
ner of New York, Clarence C. Little
(alternate) of Bar Harbor, Me., Drs.
Hannah M. Stone, Ira S. Wile, Rabbi
Sydney E. Goldstein, and Abraham
Stone (alternate), all of New York.
Biggest Job — In response to appeals
of prominent Chinese medical men for
assistance in developing birth control
among China's "submerged millions,"
Margaret Sanger this summer sailed for
China with a party of her fellow-work-
ers. In 1935 the Chinese Medical Asso-
ciation, responding to an earlier tour by
Mrs. Sanger and her helpers, went on
record as officially recognizing "contra-
ception as a part of the activities of pub-
lic health, especially in the field of ma-
ternity and child welfare."
Boston — A brush between Boston and
Brookline, Mass., police and the Birth
Control League of Massachusetts and
clinics in that section brought the league
a technical court victory. It will be
fought further by the league, in the hope
of clarifying the legal situation in regard
to birth control clinics in Boston and
Massachusetts. Several local clinics were
closed during the unpleasantness of po-
lice seizures.
Good Record — A recent article, Vol-
unteers Venture [see The Survey, Feb-
ruary 1937, page 39] described the suc-
cessful operation of a birth control clinic
in a southern community with volunteer
social workers' support. The Birth Con-
trol Educational Center of San Francisco
inspired by the article writes to the edi-
tor to describe eight and a half years'
successful operation of a project carried
on under auspices of the local American
Association of University Women in that
city. Service is free to clients sent by
authorized organizations; a nominal fee
is asked of others.
Clinics — A ten-fold increase to bring ex-
isting birth control clinics to three thou-
sand was recommended by Margaret
Sanger in her final report for the Na-
tional Committee on Federal Legislation
for Birth Control. Referring to the court
decision which early this year upheld
birth control under medical direction,
Mrs. Sanger said, "This has opened the
294
way to a far more fundamental goal —
the inclusion of birth control in public
health programs and the carrying of con-
traceptive information to neglected moth-
ers in isolated regions."
Mrs. Sanger suggested a program of
education in birth control to be carried
on by nurses as instructors, similar to
the familiar visiting nurse service. She
suggested educational caravans to carry
contraceptive information to remote
places. According to Birth Control Clin-
ical Research Bureau records, some
56,000 women who have appealed for
advice have received information from
the bureau.
Bootleg — A recent issue of American
Mercury estimated that unauthorized
sales of birth control devices in America,
although prohibited by law, amount to
about $300 million. The ' bootleg" trade,
according to this report, is divided among
some two hundred small manufacturers
and nine large ones and is carried on
mainly through drugstores, cosmetic
stores, beauty parlors and filling stations.
Planning Health
'TpHE Leonard Wood Memorial is
girding itself for world war on lep-
rosy. "Leprosy must be controlled where
it exists, even in the country where it
has a toe-hold, and prevented from en-
tering countries which are free from it."
The memorial has developed a program
of international education on how leprosy
is communicated and why it persists in
certain areas; of expanding activity in
research as to its cause and nature; and
of study and experiment to discover the
most effective treatment and to improve
methods. The next world conference of
leprosy workers will be held at Cairo,
Egypt, in March 1938 under the auspices
of the International Leprosy Association
with the Leonard Wood Memorial help-
ing substantially toward the expenses.
AMA Looking Glass — The follow-
ing excerpts from the editorial pages of
the Journal of the American Medical
Association reflect the association's own
official look at the action concerning so-
cial medicine taken at its summer con-
vention. [See The Survey, July 1937,
page 225], "The medical profession has
never failed in its ideal of medical care
for all — rich and poor alike — regardless
of their ability to pay. . . . The ideals
of mutual responsibility between doctor
and patient, unalterable opposition to
commercialized, bureaucratic or state
practice, and willingness to do our ut-
most in providing all that can be pro-
vided to the sick still remain among the
accepted principles of American medi-
cine.
"The problems of medical care have
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been during the past ten years like a
seething volcano, constantly erupting
great masses of fire in the form of hastily
concocted, dangerous schemes and plans
which the medical community and the
public alike had to avoid or perish. The
eruptions associated with the last annual
session vary, however, from those which
occurred in the past. They seemed to
come, although somewhat indirectly,
from Washington. . . . The end result
was a direct proffer, by the House of
Delegates of the AMA to the U. S. gov-
ernment, of the services of the associa-
tion in working out suitable plans for the
care of the indigent sick. . . . The House
has not indicated its acceptance of any
new form of medical practice. It has,
however, authorized the board of trus-
tees, as its representatives, to cooperate
with the government in developing the
best possible care of the indigent sick,
within the principles fundamental to good
medical service previously established."
Foundation Emphasis — Concentra-
tion of effort by the Rockefeller Foun-
dation on certain diseases where there is
a reasonable expectation of transfer from
the non-preventable class is reported in
the foundation's annual report for 1936.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
295
The work of the International Health
Division was conducted last year on a
budget of $2,100,000 in thirty states and
in forty-one foreign countries. The ma-
jor portion went to laboratory and field
services and to the investigation and con-
trol of specific diseases. About one fourth
of the sum was devoted to public health
education and the aid of state and local
governments in setting up model health
centers and demonstrations.
The foundation, says the report, is
giving "increasing emphasis" to mental
hygiene. Discussing its approach the re-
port says:
"What is meant by 'mental hygiene'?
Admittedly, it is a loose term. There is
no single word satisfactorily compre-
hensive of the fields which it covers.
Perhaps 'psychiatry' comes closest to the
meaning of the foundation's present pro-
gram, with the understanding that the
word must be given a broad interpreta-
tion. It must mean far more than the
traditional interests of the clinical psy-
chiatrist. If it is to be truly comprehen-
sive, it must range all the way from
anatomy to psychology. It must deal with
the function of the nervous system, the
role of internal secretions, the factors of
heredity, the diseases affecting mental
and psychical phenomena — in brief, it
must lay a factual foundation for what
is often called psychobiology.
"The foundation has no illusion that
the complete answer to the problem of
mental abnormality lies in any particular
approach. In this field of mental be-
havior, as in all other fields, there is no
exclusive or predetermined way to
knowledge. Amid too much shouting dis-
agreement among the doctors and too
many schools of thought, it is best to seek
competent, serious workers who offer .rea-
sonable hope of adding helpful scaffolding
or permanent bricks to the edifice of
verifiable knowledge of man and his be-
havior."
Plague Fighters
gram outside the city of New York.
These funds were received from the
Milbank Memorial Fund and from the
New York Foundation. Eleven com-
munity institutes on syphilis have been
held this year to enlist citizen interest.
The New York Association for Im-
proving the Condition of the Poor re-
ports that last year it spent $20,847.66
in care of 215 families in which syphilis
was known to be a problem. In a recent
bulletin from the association a chart of
the services given such families is pre-
sented. (Syphilis— and the "Conspiracy
of Silence," from the AICP, 105 East
22 Street, New York.)
New Hampshire in August joined the
parade of states now requiring blood
tests before marriage licenses are issued.
tion of Lois Buell of New York. A full
report of the work and how it was done
has been prepared in mimeographed
form by the National Federation of Set-
tlements. Report No. 6, Twenty-fifth
conference, National Federation of Set-
tlements, 147 Avenue B, New York.
Reading List — The volunteer service
bureau of the Boston Council of Social
Agencies has issued a catalogue of recom-
mended books and magazines "for the
interest and information of volunteers in
social work." Price 10 cents from the
council, 80 Federal Street, Boston.
Professional
has made a vigorous be-
ginning in a campaign for the eradi-
cation of syphilis. Officials of the U. S.
Public Health Service cite this as "the
first American city to attack the prob-
lem in any realistic way." A law ef-
fective for all Illinois on July 1 makes
it illegal for anyone to marry without
valid evidence, based on a physical ex-
amination including blood and microscope
tests, that both parties to the marriage
are free from venereal infection. In
Chicago, a million ballots were sent out
by the ^ local health authorities on the
query, "In strict confidence and at no
expense to you, would you like to be
given by your physician a blood test for
syphilis?" Incomplete returns showed 93
percent voting "Yes." A parade of 1500
boys and girls in the city's busy Loop
section carried banners proclaiming that
"Chicago will stamp out syphilis." Pa-
raders helped to distribute the ballots. A
poll by the Gallup Institute of Public
Opinion on the same question brought 95
percent favorable answers from Chi-
cagoans.
Already the State Department of Pub-
lic Health has found the demands for
pre-marriage tests so heavy that time-
saving devices and plans have been insti-
tuted. Physicians and clergymen have
been asked to cooperate, the physicians
to supply case histories (anonymous) and
the ministers to urge their congregations
to cooperate in the campaign. The city
has arranged for the services of a group
of senior students from recognized medi-
cal schools to help busy physicians make
out reports.
Nation-wide returns from the Gallup
poll showed that 87 percent of those
questioned would be willing to have the
test. Young people gave a particularly
high percent of favorable answers.
The State Charities Aid Association
of New York, through its committee on
tuberculosis and health work cooperat-
ing with the New York State Depart-
ment of Health, has 1937 grants total-
ing $21,000 for a syphilis education pro-
Citizen Service
JF Detroit social work does not have
the benefit of an intelligently coopera-
tive group of volunteers, board members
and interested laymen it will not be the
fault of the Community Fund and Coun-
cil of Social Agencies. Both are carrying
on active volunteer training projects.
For two "semesters" of twelve weeks
each, the council's Central Volunteer
Bureau gave a course known as Social
Clinics. Prominent social workers and
educators were asked to lecture on sub-
jects designed to give general background
and understanding of urgent social prob-
lems. Enrollment was limited to thirty-
five. Examination papers reviewing the
course revealed an impressive awareness
of the implications of the problems stud-
ied, and a growth in social philosophies.
The Community Fund called upon
Leah Feder, associate professor of social
work at Washington University in St.
Louis, for a series of lectures covering
practical working information for board
members. After the institute, local so-
cial agency boards ordered more than
five hundred copies of a mimeographed
transcript of her lectures. Available from
Detroit Community Fund, 51 Warren
Avenue West.
Sextuplets— A central planning board
originated by the town of Linden, N. J.
as machinery for a "community-wide at-
tack on social ills," announces that it now
has sextuplets. Five other towns have
"asked to get into the cradle" and now it
is the Six Town Plan, with a publication
known as the Si* Town Social Surveyor.
A research staff supplies facts for the
use of^ the "round tables" whose
' knights" are the members of the board.
At last reports there were 151 of them.
Players Project— The Cleveland Jun-
ior League Players in the past year car-
ried out a drama project in cooperation
with Cleveland settlements under direc-
296
exploratory study to discover the
possibilities for developing uniform
accounting in social work has been un-
dertaken at the request of a group rep-
resenting five national agencies: the
American Public Welfare Association,
the National Conference of Catholic
Charities, the National Council of Jew-
ish Federations and Welfare Funds, the
National Social Work Council and Com-
munity Chests and Councils, Inc.
The project was originally proposed
to the Committee on Accounting and
Statistics of Social Work, affiliated with
the National Conference of Social Work,
by its chairman, C. Rufus Rorem,'
C.P.A. After detailed discussion at a
meeting during the National Conference
of Social Work in Indianapolis it was
agreed: that there is need for special em-
phasis on uniform accounting in the field
of social work, both public and private;
that existing committees in the field of
statistics probably should not undertake
the more specialized problem of financial
accounting; that the work of developing
uniform classifications and definitions
would require the services of a full time
executive officer; that any program for
the development of uniform accounting
should be coordinated with programs in
statistics and should be guided by ex-
perienced and professionally qualified so-
cial workers, in order that recommenda-
tions might be consistent with the best
social work practice.
A special committee then was ap-
pointed to propose to the five national
organizations that they "associate them-
selves through a joint committee to pro-
mote uniform accounting in social work
throughout its various fields on a nation-
wide scale, and including private agencies
and governmental departments, federal,
state and local."
This committee included, with Mr.
Rorem, Henry Bauling, Jewish Chari-
ties of Chicago; Ralph G. Hurlin, Rus-
sell Sage Foundation; Helen Jeter, So-
cial Security Board; and Raymond F.
Clapp, Indianapolis Community Fund.
Officers of the five national agericies
who are participating in the planning to
THE SURVEY
date are: Fred K. Hoehler, American
Public Welfare Association; Bradley
Buell, Community Chests and Councils,
Inc.; Rt. Rev. Msgr. John O'Grady, Na-
tional Conference of Catholic Charities;
Harry Lurie, National Council of Jew-
ish Federations and Welfare Funds and
David C. Holbrook, National Social
Work Council. Federal agencies invited
to join in the further activities of the
committee are the Central Statistical
Board, the Social Security Board, the
Children's Bureau and the Works
Progress Administration.
The special committee, with Mr.
Clapp as chairman, is continuing its ac-
tivity in association with the national
agency representatives. As a result of its
efforts the American Public Welfare As-
sociation assigned R. Clyde White, part
time member of its staff and professor of
social economics at the University of Chi-
cago, to make this summer an explora-
tory study of the extent and character of
need for the development of uniform
accounting in the welfare field, and the
possibilities for progress in that direction.
Social Workers for Nebraska —
Responding to "an urgent need for
trained personnel in the field of social
work on a professional level," the Uni-
versity of Nebraska this fall will es-
tablish a new graduate school of social
work. Although a bachelor's degree from
a recognized college is prerequisite, un-
der certain conditions "adult special"
students without such a degree may be
admitted to some courses. The school
will offer the degree of Master of Arts
in public and private welfare. It will be
established on the basis of requirements
of the American Association of Schools
of Social Work, and recognition in that
body will be sought as soon as regula-
tions permit. First semester opens Sep-
tember 15. The school has as its first
director, Ernest F. Witte, a past presi-
dent of the Nebraska State Conference
of Social Work.
News Notes — The April issue of the
quarterly of the Charity Organization
Society of London is devoted to Mothers
of Britain: Estimates of Their Effi-
ciency. The material, largely gathered
by questionnaires, was prepared for the
second international conference on The
Mother in Her Home, held in Paris in
June. (Price 1 shilling from the society.
Denison House, 296 Vauxhall Bridge
Road, London S.W.I)
A new program of professional courses
in public service will be offered this fall
at New York University, division of
general education, in cooperation with
administrative departments of the New
York city and state governments. The
course, planned by a board of govern-
ment experts, will be given at the uni-
versity's Washington Square College.
At the early summer meeting of the
American Home Economics Association,
a resolution was adopted to the effect
that: "Whereas, all home economics is
directed toward a common goal, namely
the improvement of personal and family
living and activities growing out of
them; ... the chairmen of departments
of the association devote a portion of
their programs to the presentation of the
common purpose and to a consideration
of the social significance of their par-
ticular field of work to the ultimate ob-
jective of home economics."
New York University School of
Architecture and Allied Arts will offer
a course in housing by Carol Aronovici,
classes to begin September 23.
What We Preach— The staff of the
national office of the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers has "got itself"
protected under New York state unem-
ployment insurance provisions. After long
negotiations, the appropriate state de-
partment finally ruled that the AASW
"appears to be a professional organiza-
tion promoting the interest of its mem-
bers and fostering professional ideals and
standards ... as a professional organiza-
tion is subject to the New York State
unemployment insurance law as of Janu-
ary 1, 1936, as it employed at least four
persons within each of thirteen or more
calendar weeks in 1935 and 1936." In
commenting on the decision The Com-
pass says (August 1937, page 21): "The
decision . . . that the work of a national
organization of this kind does not come
under the exemption clause indicates that
many other organizations not dealing di-
rectly with clients might be included un-
der the New York State act and also, of
greater importance, that many agencies
throughout the country might be eligible
under the federal social security act to
the provisions for old age retirement."
The new arrangement will apply to any
member of the AASW national staff re-
ceiving less than $2600 salary. It is point-
ed out that the ruling would not apply to
social agencies generally.
People and Things
VyiLLIAM HABER has made final
his long-forecast resignation as re-
lief administrator for the State of Michi-
gan. [See The Survey, March 1937, page
88.] Concerning it, he wrote to The
Survey: "I leave the emergency relief
picture particularly well pleased because
the legislature has adopted all of the
proposed bills for the reorganization of
welfare services in the state."
Since he first joined the Michigan
ERA as assistant administrator in 1933,
Mr. Haber has made an increasingly
useful contribution to the emergency re-
lief and public welfare fields, both in
practice and in professional thought.
Though he is now Professor Haber in
the department of economics and in the
graduate school of public and social ad-
ministration of Michigan University, he
continues in public service as a member
of the advisory committee to the state's
Social Security Board.
When Professor Haber's resignation
from relief administration was an-
nounced, the New 'York Times published
a long commentary entitled Spoilsmen
Foiled by Relief Head.
Powers That Be — President Roose-
velt resigned, recently, from one of his
longest-held offices — president since 1922
of the Boy Scout Foundation of Greater
New York. J. Stewart Baker, chairman
of the board of the Bank of Manhattan,
succeeded to the office at the special re-
quest of the retiring incumbent. Barren
Collier, who has been acting president
and directing head of the foundation
since Mr. Roosevelt first was elected
governor of New York, also has ten-
dered his resignation. Perry A. Lint, for-
merly scout executive of the Chicago
Council of Boy Scouts has been appointed
executive of the New York foundation.
Charles P. Taft, Cincinnati attorney,
is to be chairman of the coming Com-
munity Mobilization for Human Needs,
it is announced by the Community Chests
and Councils, Inc. Vice-chairmen in-
clude: Dr. A. H. Giannini, Los Angeles;
Louis E. Kirstein, Boston; Mrs. Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt, Washington; Mrs.
Harper Sibley, Rochester; Gerard Swope,
New York.
James Phinney Baxter, 3d, professor
of history and a house master at Har-
vard University, has been named to suc-
ceed Tyler Dennett as president of Wil-
liams College, Williamstown, Mass.
To Spain — American members who
sailed last month to join an international
commission to survey the needs of Span-
ish child refugees include: Constance
Kyle of the University of Illinois College
of Medicine; Lillian Emder, of the per-
manent disaster relief staff of the Amer-
ican Red Cross, Philadelphia; Virginia
C. Malbin, of the Jewish Children's Bu-
reau of Chicago; Rose L. Gregg of the
bureau of child guidance of the New
York City Board of Education, Jen B.
Chakin of the Jewish Social Service As-
sociation, New York.
Seventy Useful Years — Friends and
admirers of Homer Folks will welcome
a recently published brochure containing
the lively tributes paid Mr. Folks at his
seventieth birthday dinner, early this
year. Pointing to the scope of his public
service during his many years as an out-
standing social worker and champion of
progressive legislation in New York City,
and throughout the state as secretary of
the State Charities Aid Association,
Charles E. Hughes called him "a states-
SEPTEMBER 1937
297
man in the field of philanthropic en-
deavor." Mayor La Guardia told the
audience of leading citizens and social
workers that "Mr. Folks was willing to
give me advice way back in 1929 when
all of you respectable people wouldn't
even talk to me."
About Nurses — The resignation of
Major Julia C. Stimson, R.N. as super-
intendent of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps
took effect in early summer. Known
throughout the country for her energetic
contributions to a wide range of activi-
ties of the nursing profession, Major
Stimson has also a distinguished war
and service record. She is now vice-
president of the American Nurses Asso-
ciation and secretary of the board of the
American Journal of Nursing. Her suc-
cessor as superintendent of the Army
Nurse Corps is Julia O. Flikke, R.N.,
who has been assistant superintendent.
King George VI of England included
in the coronation honors list the name of
Olive Baggallay, secretary of the Flor-
ence Nightingale International Founda-
tion, who thereby becomes a Member of
the Order of the British Empire.
Fellowships — The National Urban
League recently awarded two fellowships
of $1000 each for study in social work.
Recipients are William Y. Bell, Jr. of
New York and John Caswell Smith, Jr.
head worker of the Wharton Settlement
in Philadelphia. Since its organization in
1910, the league has awarded eighty-two
fellowships to Negro students, all of
whom have engaged in welfare activities
among Negroes.
New Jobs — Earle G. Lippincott, on
the staff of the New York COS since
completing post-graduate studies at the
New York School of Social Work, has
gone to Savannah, Ga., as executive di-
rector of the Family Welfare Society of
that city. . . . Louis Brenner, who has
served with the United Palestine Appeal
and Joint Distribution Committee, has
been named to succeed Isidore Sobeloff
as director of the New York office of the
National Jewish Hospital at Denver.
Mr. Sobeloff is now executive director
of the Jewish Welfare Federation in
Detroit.
Elizabeth Crockett, well known to
Boston social work during her years as
resident worker at the Ellis Memorial
Settlement and with the Home and
School Visitors Association, has joined
the staff of the New England Home for
Little Wanderers, where she will be
concerned with organization, publicity
and finance.
Temple University has announced the
appointment of Everett W. DuVall as
associate director of the department of
social group work. He comes from the
University of Southern California where
he has been on a research job for the
All-Nations Foundation, Los Angeles.
A. R. Gephart, executive secretary of
the Missouri Association for Social Wel-
fare, has resigned as executive secretary
to become director of public relations for
Central College at Fayette, Mo. Helen
A. Brown, social worker from St. Louis
succeeds Mr. Gephart.
Christine C. Robb, AASW national
office staff member since 1933, left her
job behind on September 1. She plans
a September marriage and does not ex-
pect to continue actively in social work
Myrl W. Alexander, who has been
senior warden's assistant in the federal
prison at Atlanta now succeeds Ray L.
Huff as parole executive for the U.S.
Board of Parole.
What Is It?— The Indiana Welfare
News passes on a query to "dere lady,"
the social worker, from one of the
would-be-public-assisted: "Pies giv me
som of your astince (assistance). I nede
it bad, as I am a pore old woman and
finashuly helpless from the hips down.
Thank you for som astince. Is astince
money or what? Yurs hopfully —
Social Work Business — One of the
outstanding demonstrations in bringing
business methods, economy and efficiency
into the field of public welfare adminis-
tration has been that of John C. Weigel,
fiscal supervisor of the Illinois Depart-
ment of Public Welfare. Mr. Weigel
came into the work from the administra-
torship of the Institute for Juvenile Re-
search, Chicago, and reorganized stand-
ards and practices from the bottom up.
His reports have been distinctive, packed
with suggestions for public welfare ad-
ministrators everywhere.
Announcement has been made of his
promotion to the newly created post of
administrative assistant in the same de-
partment, and he will focus on its rap-
idly expanding work under the new fed-
eral and state legislation. His first assign-
ment is to the division of old age assist-
ance and its reorganization. He is suc-
ceeded by James P. Cox as state fiscal
supervisor.
Corning Events — The National Coun-
cil of Jewish Juniors will hold its tenth
biennial conference in Pittsburgh Octo-
ber 10-13. . . . The American Public
Works Association will hold the 1937
Public Works Congress on October 4-6
in Atlanta, Ga. . . . The twenty-first
anniversary of the Summer Play School-;
movement will be celebrated with a din-
ner by the Child Study Association of
America on October 27 in New York.
. . . The Second National Conference
on Educational Broadcasting will be held
in Chicago November 20-December 1,
under the auspices of interested educa-
tional organizations. Information from
C. S. Marsh, 744 Jackson Place, Wash-
ington, D. C. . . . The Civil Service As-
sembly will meet this year in Ottawa,
Canada, October 4-8. . . . The Ameri-
can Prison Congress will meet October
10-15 in Philadelphia. . . . The Ameri-
can Public Health Association meets Oc-
tober 5-8 in New York.
At the recent meeting of the Grand
Council of the International Council for
Nurses, it was decided to hold the next
congress of the organization in the United
States. . . . The Fourth International
Conference on Leprosy will be held in
Cairo, Egypt, March 21, 1938, under
auspices of the International Leprosy
Association.
Indiana State Conference on Social
Work will be held September 30-October
3 in Indianapolis. . . . New York State
Conference of Social Work to be held
this year in New York City, opens with
institutes October 18-19 and lasts through
the week.
The Delaware State Conference of
Social Work, meeting this year in Wil-
mington, December 2 and 3, aims par-
ticularly to develop community interest
in welfare needs. Lay as well as pro-
fessional leaders, local and national, have
been asked to participate.
Regrets — By some unfortunate stroke
of misinformation, The Survey errone-
ously reported last month that Josephine
C. Brown of the WPA staff in Wash-
ington had resigned in favor of a long
vacation. We are happy to report that the
only foundation of fact is that she did
take a vacation, in Europe. Miss Brown
is now back at her WPA desk, doing a
special job of research and writing.
Deaths
DARWIN R. JAMES, president of the
Brooklyn N. Y. Bureau of Charities
for seventeen years, and chairman of the
New York State Board of Housing.
Prominent in the civic and financial life
of New York, Mr. James always gave
liberally of his time to welfare work,
and at the time of his death was in the
midst of planning the bureau's annual
drive for funds.
AMOS W. BUTLER, a pioneer in social
welfare in Indiana, a past president of
the then National Conference of Chari-
ties and Corrections and former secre-
tary and executive officer of the Indiana
Board of State Charities.
HARVEY D. BROWN, director of the Phil-
adelphia Health Council and Tuberculo-
sis Committee and a former director of
the National Tuberculosis Association.
MARGARET W. O'CONNOR, retired New
York state public health nurse super-
visor, long associated with the state de-
partment of health.
298
THE SURVEY
Readers Write
1862— Joseph Lee— 1937
To THE EDITOR: For Joseph Lee's
American idealism life was not for the
few and the privileged. It was not worth-
while unless it could be made worthwhile
for all who were willing to play their
part.
His country was not a success unless
it could bring decent living and fair op-
portunity to all who had willing hands
and active minds.
He carried the instincts of true sports-
manship into life itself with the claim
that everyone must have a fair start in
the race of life and a fair chance to
run it.
But he gave more than good will and
money. His unique contribution was a
mind that thought through towards the
causes that pull men down; that also
reached out after the things that could
best build them up.
He believed in the conquest of pov-
erty; but not through sentimental pallia-
tives or brainless decrees. He believed
that mass poverty could be conquered by
reaching down to the roots of things
and dealing with basic causes.
His interest was not only in patch-
ing together the pieces of broken lives
but in preventing the things that do the
breaking.
He sought not only to cure life's ills,
but to make ordinary life worth living
when the ills are cured.
To his mind there appeared to be an
unhappy combination of misguided senti-
ment, racial prejudice and commercial
greed that was helping to spread mass
poverty from inexhaustible sources in
the old world over our new land through
unrestricted and inadequately controlled
immigration, and with this he contended
from the beginning to the end.
Through the Massachusetts Civic
League he helped in countless ways to
correct and improve the laws of his own
state and the methods of their execution.
As a director of education on the
school board of Boston he gave some
of his best years and the best of his mind
in order that public education might be
the fitting for life, which is its true
purpose.
Life in the impatient vigor of youth
was what especially appealed to him. It
was he who saw most clearly that this
youthful life was being needlessly
cramped and driven into unwholesome
channels, from lack of the natural and
wholesome outlet afforded by the play-
grounds which he instituted.
All over the land these playgrounds
are giving healthier and better lives to
countless numbers. For that alone his
country owes him a debt of enduring
gratitude.
Whether that debt be remembered or
forgotten, his work remains, and he is
content, for such was his nature.
RICHARDS M. BRADLEY
Boston, Mass.
Teamwork
To THE EDITOR: The Committee on
Care of Transient and Homeless is most
appreciative of The Survey's up-to-the-
minute reporting of developments in the
transient field. During the five years of
our existence — the National Conference
in Indianapolis marked our fifth birth-
day— your cooperation has been most
helpful in our work.
The committee has been and continues
to be a unique experiment in social or-
ganization. Given status in its appoint-
ment by the National Social Work Coun-
cil, the committee did not become "just
another national agency." Instead, it co-
ordinated the efforts of the many na-
tional agencies concerned with the tran-
sient problem and thereby eliminated the
inevitable duplication and waste had each
agency gone its way alone.
We feel that largely through the ef-
forts of the national committee and the
many local and state transient commit-
tees, public welfare departments are
realizing a responsibility for the transient
which many of them were unwilling to
concede previously. Such a realization,
coupled with the more widespread
knowledge of the field which is being ac-
complished by the Department of Labor
study, the distribution of our publication,
After Five Years, and the continued re-
porting of developments in The Survey,
will result, we feel, inevitably in an ade-
quate program to meet the needs of our
moving population. While most of this
committee's attention has been centered
upon the transient, the local homeless
have not been neglected entirely. Fur-
ther concentration on this group is con-
templated through a subcommittee on the
homeless which is now planning its
activities.
The unmet needs in transient and
homeless care are still with us but we
are encouraged by the results which have
been obtained and shall continue to push
for an adequate program of local, state
and federal cooperation by which the
needs can be met.
Executive Secretary PHILIP E. RYAN
Committee on Care of
Transient and Homeless
Professional
LETTERS AND GOODWILL, by Hilary
Campbell. The Social Work Publicity Coun-
cil, 130 East 22 Street, New York. 15 pp
Price 35 cents.
Help for the troubled executive whose
letters "lack something," a friendly quality
perhaps. Many examples are offered and
analyzed.
YESTERDAY AND TODAY WITH COM-
MUNITY CHESTS. Community Chests and
Councils. Inc., 155 East 44 Street, New
York. 56 pp. Price 50 cents, less in quantity.
A summary of dates, figures and facts
covering the twenty-four years of the
modern community chest movement.
LIFE INSURANCE FACTS FOR SOCIAL
WORKERS, by John N. McDowell. From
the author, Room 400, 260 Broad Street,
Philadelphia. 20 pp. Price 25 cents, less in
quantity.
Prepared for various public assistance
THE PAMPHLET SHELF
agencies in Philadelphia, this contains the
gist of what social workers need to know
in this important area of service to their
clients.
People
QUESTIONS FACING CONSUMERS: A
Guide for Discussion, by Benson Y. Landis.
Eastern Cooperative League, 112 Charlton
Street, New York. 25 pp. Price 10 cents,
less in quantity.
Material for ten sessions, each including
a statement of a special phase of consumer
concern, questions for consideration, sum-
maries of various points of view and a
brief bibliography.
THE LABOR SPY, by Gordon Hopkins. Vol.
3, No. 12 of Social Action, The Pilgrim
Press. 289 Fourth Avenue, New York. 32
pp. Price 10 cents.
An interpretation, by a young news-
paper man, of evidence presented before
the LaFollette committee of the Senate
and of cases in the records of the National
Labor Relations Board.
CONSIDER THE LAUNDRY WORKERS,
by Jane Filley and Therese Mitchell. League
of Women Shoppers, 220 Fifth Avenue,
New York. 64 pp. Price 10 cents.
Designed to rouse consumers to their
responsibility and their power through or-
ganized action to change conditions in an
industry. The home lives of the workers,
"as wretched as their working conditions,''
are emphasized.
CHANGING RURAL AMERICA, by Ferry
L. Platt. Vol. 3, No. 11 of Social Action,
The PilRrim Press, 289 Fourth Avenue, New
York. 31 pp. Price 10 cents.
A summary of the complex problems of
rural life, economic and social, with sug-
gested areas for constructive action and
the conclusion that "The American farmer
is not yet 'stolid and stunned, a brother
to the ox.' Not yet."
SEPTEMBER 1937
299
Book Reviews
The Unit of Need
SOCIAL INSIGHT IN CASE SITUATIONS,
by Ada Eliot Sheffield. Appleton-Century. 283
pp. Price $2.25 postpaid of The Survey.
\ NALYSIS of processes and definition
•*^ of terms, as aids to better work, have
been Mrs. Sheffield's major contribution
to the literature of case work. In the
present volume she introduces a new
unit of analysis, the "need situation," as
"intermediate between the whole con-
crete case and mere abstracted factors."
Through a dozen illustrations, she
seeks to define this "unit" and its values
to case work and to the furtherance of
case work's claim to professional status.
This "situation is the case as conceived
at some juncture that is significant for
the fortunes of the values at stake." In
simple cases, with single "situations," the
definition is fairly clear, but when the
case treatment extends over a period of
years, with one situation melting into
another and with various "sub-situations"
appearing, one wonders whether the case
worker would be able to mark them off
as she went along, or could discern them
only through a backward view.
One of the discouraging things about
case work is the difficulty of measuring
success or of knowing when to close the
case. If thinking is "situation-centered"
instead of "client-centered," the very
statement of the "need-situation" defines
the goal of treatment and if there are
"sub-situations" with "proximate goals,"
progress can be indicated still more
clearly. Each situation has a "time-span,"
long or short, sometimes definite, some-
times merging into another "situation,"
but at least more "compassable" than
the whole complex welter of factors
which make up a "case."
Another feature of a "situation-cen-
tered" view of a case is its emphasis on
relationships and on environmental fac-
tors, on the possibilities of growth that
lie in experiences shared with others and
"in favorable changes in objective cir-
cumstances." "The meeting of needs
which cramp and distort the relations
between an individual and those about
him, makes for fuller living. By giving
to this person a sense of security, to that
one a lift from health worries and dis-
couragement, to still another an increase
in status-satisfaction or a hope for some
realizable achievement, a whole stalled
situation may be released from its inhibi-
tions and set moving ahead." What a
fresh vision this gives the public agency
worker, worried because, in her neces-
sary concentration on environmental fac-
tors, she has no opportunity to do case
work.
A further possibility in this view of case
work is the development of "situation
patterns," or similarities between one sit-
uation and others. "While it is true that
no case would ever be duplicated, yet the
experienced worker finds certain factors
taking on a major significance as more
closely and persistently interactive than
others, and recurrent, as such, in other
situations. . . . The importance of iden-
tifying such basic patterns is that it helps
us in following the social process as a
complicated case develops, and in recog-
nizing type likenesses between situations
that occur at divers times and places."
So far, case workers have studied their
material and procedures by either the case
method or the statistical method. The for-
mer stresses the uniqueness of each case,
"so that the student passes on to investi-
gate other situations with but little carry-
over of conscious implementation from
her experience with this one." The latter
may "establish a causal relationship for
one situation-item after another," but
fails to give an understanding of a "psy-
cho-social whole" which, "like an organ-
ism, conditions the nature of its interde-
pendent elements."
"Situational thinking . . . bids for a
fresh approach to the study of case work
processes by a procedure of situation-
defining," a method complementary to
the quantitative method and one which
"might in time afford more meaningful
categories for a quasi-statistical treat-
ment than do case histories."
Such "situation thinking" may proceed
on the level of helping client groups to
see their own needs in terms of life re-
lationships, on the level of the case work-
er's theoretical interest in the adjustive
processes, or on the rigorously scientific
level of the academic research worker.
Mrs. Sheffield challenges too easy dis-
missal of such "situation thinking" by
the statement that there are "certain in-
tellectual limitations to which case work-
ers are liable from the very nature of
their immediate responsibilities." The
concreteness of their problems and their
standards of "individualized treatment"
tend to make them stress methods and
skills. "Profuse particulars" hide "type
patterns." And, though insisting on the
"uniqueness" of each case, workers are
prone to swing "to far-flung generaliza-
tions based on figures about abstracted
fact-items, especially when these are
made the basis for reforms sought by
law." Better interpretation through "ap-
propriate conceptual tools," enrichment
of service and a "social spread of in-
sights" through a "program of experi-
mental groupings"; these, she concludes,
amply "justify the continuance of private
social agencies." And one wonders
whether this may not be one field in
which public agencies, also, may do some
experimenting.
CAROLINE BEDFORD
St. Louis Relief Administration
Levelheaded Psychiatry
GUIDING YOUR LIFE, by Josephine A. Jack-
son, M.D. Appleton-Century. 352 pp. Price
$2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
CIXTEEN years ago, when the dy-
namic point of view in psychiatry
was as yet unincorporated into Ameri-
can psychiatry, Dr. Jackson had the
courage and the foresight to write a
book in which the essential principles of
Freud's concepts were explained. By
means of homely examples, simple words
and direct personal applications she con-
veyed, to a large reading public, infor-
mation and a point of view, the helpful-
ness of which were proved by the book's
huge sale. Many physicians prescribed
her book and were pleased with the en-
couragement and insight which it gave to
their patients. Indeed it might be said
to have been one of the first intentional
pieces of bibliotherapeutic writing by a
psychiatrist and it still is one of the most
successful.
Dr. Jackson's book was written with
the advantage of added years of experi-
ence in the application of simple com-
mon sense explanations of adjustment
problems. She has reduced to writing the
talks which she uses regularly in her
clinical work. The result is a quiet,
levelheaded, sensible book, though by no
means so remarkable or important as its
predecessor, because in the sixteen-year
interval since the publication of Out-
witting Our Nerves the point of view
which then was so new had been widely
disseminated. The present book, how-
ever, is written in the same clear style.
Some critics may think its structure too
simple and discursive, but it is safe to
say that to a certain public it will be ap-
pealing and helpful.
KARL A. MENNINGER, M.D.
Topeka, Kan.
Spartan Standards
THE HUMAN NEEDS OF LABOUR, by B.
Seebohm Rowntree. Longmans, Green. 162 pp.
Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
TJERE is the most recent of a series
of studies to discover the family re-
sponsibilities of the average English wage
earner, and what is the lowest figure at
which they can be met. It bears the same
title as a book published in 1918, and one
of its interests lies in a comparison of
standards and costs of living, then and
now.
First having assured himself that the
site of the earlier studies, York, is typi-
cal for industrial England in respect to
family composition, earnings of unskilled
labor and costs, the author checked, by
an analysis of census figures, the earlier
assumption that normally an adult male
300
wage earner must be expected to sup-
port a wife and three children. This was
important because there had been much
talk of a reduction in the size of the aver-
age family. Similarly, he found statisti-
cal support for the view that, while more
women have become self-supporting, they
do not normally support dependents.
Admitting that even a national mini-
mum wage, on these bases, would leave
large numbers of families insufficiently
provided for, at least during part of their
life, the author holds that such needs
must be met by some other means, best
probably by a system of family allowance.
The greater knowledge possessed to-
day of qualitative dietary requirements
tends to add to the food allowance. On
the other hand, following the recom-
mendations of a recent report by a com-
mittee of the British Medical Associa-
tion, the author adopts a slightly lower
quantitative minimum than was consid-
ered necessary twenty years ago. To pro-
vide this food for the typical family of
five cost 20s. 6d. at the end of 1936, and
the minimum budget comes to 53 shill-
ings for the town worker and to 41
shillings for the country worker.
The author evidently fears that in em-
ployer circles his exceedingly modest es-
timate of household requirements and
costs still will be regarded as visionary;
he continually apologizes for this item or
that, and for the budget as a whole. Yet,
according to this analysis, "about one
third of the children in Britain will, dur-
ing five or more of their most critical
years, be insufficiently provided for, even
according to the Spartan standard set
forth in this book."
New York BRUNO LASKER
The Facts Are . . .
PUBLIC MEDICAL SERVICES, by Michael M.
Davis. University of Chicago Press. 170 pp.
Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
TT is rather surprising that a country
so proud of its public education as is
the United States should have paid so
little attention to its developments in pub-
lic medicine. The actuality has run far
ahead of general recognition.
Believe it or not, nearly 70 percent
of all the hospital beds in the country
(counting mental hospitals and tuberculo-
sis hospitals) are maintained by govern-
ment; still others have public support
through public funds paid to voluntary
hospitals for the care of the indigent
sick. The hypothetical man in the street
probably still believes that charity has a
lot to do with providing medical services.
Actually, Mr. Davis finds, less than 5
percent of the funds spent for the care
of moderate income and low income fami-
lies comes from charity; probably the
amount is less than half that percentage.
On the other hand, even in 1929 tax
funds bore nearly a quarter of the costs
of medical services for this great mass
of our population; in 1936 that share
In ansrvering
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
Child Welfare Case Records
Edited by WILMA WALKER
A unique collection of eighteen case records, selected from the files of seven
different child welfare agencies in the Chicago area which are concerned with
the care of dependent children. The cases presented were chosen for the
variety of problems presented.
An effective textbook in child welfare courses. A valuable guide
for the case worker. £(3.00; postpaid, $3.15.
Handbook on Social Case
Recording
By MARGARET GOCHRAN BRISTOL
A social work administrator says: "It is the best book I have read on the
subject. It has sensed the real problems of recording, is readable, right to the
point, and makes practical suggestions." — LEAH BRUNK, State Supervisor oj
Case Work, Iowa Emergency Relief Administration.
Second edition, cloth bound, $1.50; postpaid, $1.60.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
5750 ELLIS AVENUE, CHICAGO
"A book by a reputable authority for the layman who is seriously interested in
the subject and willing to take time to digest all it has to offer." — Capital Times.
Trigant Burrow's
THE BIOLOGY OF HUMAN CONFLICT
"This new and arresting study declares that crime, like insanity, is a disorder
which implicates society at large, that the community will not be competent to
cope with either insanity or crime until it has recognized the conflict and im-
balance within itself." — Boston Sunday Post,
"... will interest particularly those dealing with mental abnormality either in
individuals or social groups. The author urges the study of man as a phylum
or part of the human race and deplores the tendency to pursue abstraction and
symbols until contact with reality is lost." — Science News Letter.
#3.50
P. Lecomte du Noiiy's
BIOLOGICAL TIME
"... a scientist of great note, has written a short concentrated volume on the
so-called biological or physiological time. ... A fascinating description of the
dynamic studies in cellular reparation, first, as the cicatrization (healing) of
wounds and second, as effects .on tissue cultures." — N. Y. Times Book Review.
"Parents and children live in different worlds, because of this difference in
physiological time. A clear realization of the value of physical time to children
would bring about a real progress in education." — Dr. Alexis Carrel in the
Foreword.
#2.00
MACMILLAN New York
HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL WORK ENGINEERING
By JUNE PURCELL GUILD and ARTHUR ALDEN GUILD
A book valuable to public welfare workers, social case workers,
medical workers, and those employed in other fields of social work
by providing methods of organizing to meet the social problems of
their communities. Agency board members join professional social
workers in proclaiming Social Work Engineering as something new
in the field of social organization and financial support, practical,
readable, authoritative.
$1.50 prepaid from The Survey
advertisements please mention SURVKY MIDMONTHI.Y
301
doubtless had grown to be much larger.
Mr. Davis believes — and none is bet-
ter equipped than he to express an opin-
ion on that point — that his present book
is the first attempt at a systematic de-
scription of the character and develop-
ment of tax supported medical services
in the United States, including in that
category publicly supported services in
hospitals and clinics, home care and pub-
lic health. Like other forms of public
service, public medical service is spotty —
well developed in some parts of the
country, meager in others. In New York
State, for example, it has been estimated
that public medical services cost $6.50
a year; in many other states expenditures
are far lower, in some probably as little
as $2. By and large, coordination of pub-
lic medical services is conspicuous by its
absence, even in single communities, let
alone in wider areas. Home care of the
indigent by private physicians paid out
of public funds during the depression,
was one example. Mr. Davis believes
that, "A governmental service to the sick
in their homes should be under the same
organization as the local governmental
hospitals and their outpatient services."
The magnitude of the public's present
stake in sickness, both in terms of care
provided and of dependency because of
sickness, gives Mr. Davis' study immedi-
ate importance. That importance is
likely to increase still further in view of
discussions of new developments in this
field on the part of the medical profes-
sion and others. It is to be hoped that a
future edition will include in appendices
a summary of the detailed factual data
which the author must have brought to-
gether as the basis of his present cogent
and illuminating analysis. MARY Ross
Job Guidance
OCCUPATIONS IN RETAIL STORES, by
Dorothea de Schweinitz. International Textbook
Company. 417 pp. Price $2.75 postpaid of The
Survey.
'"IPH'IS volume was brought into being
by the cooperation of the National
Vocational Guidance Association and the
Employment Service. Written by a mem-
ber of the staff of the service, it is a
a.pable presentation of information col-
lected by a number of cooperating in-
dividuals and organizations, through a
survey of some 360 firms operating nearly
4000 retail stores in about twenty com-
munities. It is prefaced by a general de-
scription of the sort of business and of
work ordinarily called "retailing." It
then proceeds with a description of the
duties, training, earnings, promotion and
personal qualifications of employes en-
gaged in a large number of specific oc-
cupations in retail stores.
The limitations of this book seem im-
plicit in the basic material available
through the schedules of the study. There
were, in all, forty-four individuals par-
ticipating in the field work. It is not easy
to fill in even a simple questionnaire in a
way that renders the material objective
and strictly comparable. The question-
naires used in this study were far from
simple. When forty-four field workers,
many of whom compiled only a few
schedules, question employers concerning
"emphasis in hiring policies," "factors de-
termining promotion," "methods of secur-
ing increases," and "requirements and
qualifications for specific jobs," the
chances of uniformity and consistent
thoroughness seem slim.
This lack of tough-mindedness in de-
scriptions of specific jobs — and these are
perhaps the most valuable part of the
study — does not impair seriously the
book's usefulness for those whom it was
intended to serve — vocational counselors
in schools, businesses, and employment
offices, as well as individuals selecting a
field of work. It is a good rough-in. The
finer chiseling will be done, in part, by the
U. S. Employment Service itself, as well
as by other wielders of the sharpening
tools of occupational guidance.
RUTH PRINCE MACK.
Thetford Hill, Vt.
The I.L.O. and the U.S.A.
LABOR TREATIES AND LABOR COM-
PACTS, by Abraham C. Weinfeld. Principia
Press. 124 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The Sur-
vey.
DUBLISHED shortly after the close
' of the World Textile Conference of
the International Labor Organization in
Washington, Mr. Weinfeld's book, though
addressed primarily to lawyers, should
prove of invaluable assistance to those
whose interests in the history and devel-
opment of the I.L.O. and the functions of
the United States as a member thereof,
were begotten or increased by that con-
ference. Moreover the need for a work
of this nature, in which the treaty-mak-
ing power is examined in the light of court
rulings and of conditions attending the
adoption of the Constitution, has been
acute ever since President Roosevelt in
1934 accepted membership in the I.L.O.
and assumed the obligations contained in
the constitution of that organization.
Aside from a few articles appearing in
legal and other publications, the question
of the extent of such obligations and the
power to fulfill them has been untouched.
In this book Mr. Weinfeld has done a
commendable job in collecting and ana-
lyzing adjudicated cases and in gather-
ing together pertinent historical data.
This would appear to be the most impor-
tant aspect of the volume, since the Su-
preme Court may or may not find palata-
ble the author's conclusions that the
treaty-making power authorizes the rati-
fication of international conventions em-
bodying labor standards, so long as the
due process requirement is satisfied, and
that the I.L.O. constitution, therefore,
demands such action. In view of this feel-
ing, it is to be regretted that the date of
publication did not permit inclusion of the
Wagner Act and the Chaco Embargo
cases, as their relevance and significance
to the controlling issue cannot be
doubted.
Department of Labor DONALD HlSS
If ashint/ton, D. C.
The Lowest Ten Percent
A SOCIAL PROBLEM GROUP? edited by
C. P. Blacker. Oxford University Press. 228
pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
TN 1929 the Wood Committee, charged
with determining the number of
mental defectives in England and Wales,
and with recommending methods of deal-
ing with them, said in its report: "Let us
assume that we could segregate as a
separate community all the families in
this country containing mental defectives
of the primary amentia type. We should
find that we had collected among them a
most interesting social group. It would
include ... a much larger proportion of
insane persons, epileptics, paupers, crimi-
nals (especially recidivists), unemploy-
ables, habitual slum dwellers, prostitutes,
inebriates and other social inefficient^ than
would a group of families not containing
mental defectives. The overwhelming
majority of the families thus collected
would belong to that section of the com-
munity, which we propose to term the
'social problem' or 'subnormal' group.
This group comprises approximately the
lowest 10 percent in the social scale of
most communities."
The present book, A Social Prob-
lem Group?, was instigated in order to
examine the assumptions underlying the
term, social problem group. Its main
purpose was to "throw light on the essen-
tial characteristics and delimitations of
this group. ... If a significant positive
correlation were definitely established be-
tween defectives or retarded intelligence
and other subnormal or abnormal condi-
tions, considerable weight would be added
to the view that every effort ought to be
made to discourage the fertility of the
social problem group, defined as a group
of subnormal intelligence."
The present book consists of articles
by different authorities on such topics as
characteristics of the mentally retarded,
the mentally disordered, epileptics, inebri-
ates, prostitutes, recidivists and neuras-
thenics. Each article is concerned, for the
most part, with the characteristics of the
group insofar as they can be determined
by case -studies. For example, in the
study of recidivism, consideration is given
to such characteristics as incidence of
mental deficiency and mental deviation,
relationship of economic conditions and
criminality, and the importance of hered-
ity in the families of recidivists. Signifi-
cant conclusions are derived in all of the
articles.
The outstanding tendency throughout
the book is the broad tolerance by the
different authors toward all facts and
302
points of view. The introduction by Dr.
C. P. Blacker, general secretary to the
Eugenics Society, is especially noteworthy
for its tolerant interpretation of facts.
For the reader who is interested in the
social importance of eugenics, this will
prove a worthy scientific supplement to
the recent volume of the American Neu-
rological Association entitled Eugenical
Sterilization. ANTHONY J. MITRANO
The Training School at Vineland, N. J.
More Than History
A PURITAN" OUTPOST, A HISTORY OF THE
TOWN AND PEOPLE OF XORTHFIELD. MASS., by
Herbert C. Parsons. Macmillan. 546 pp. Price
$5 postpaid of The Survey.
l^NOWN for the past forty years as
a leader and prime mover in pro-
gressive social fields, Mr. Parsons in an
excellent book traces the development of
his native town of Northfield, Mass.,
and its people, from the first discovery
and legislative approval of its present
site in 1669, through the roaring spring
flood of 1936. It is a history of a town's
people, unlike any hitherto written.
Mr. Parsons deals sparingly with dates,
briefly with wars; with minute rolls,
epitaphs and town meeting votes, not at
all. He does treat fully, warmly and
understandingly the development of the
life of the people. They and their ac-
tions, their prejudices and their homely
ways of living are presented in rich de-
tail along with changes from earliest
days in dress and houses, speech and
travel, household goods and occupations.
This is not to say that the book is not
both historical and accurate. Other books
may tell of the Revolution ; this book
tells how Burgoyne's soldiers settled in
the country, and what became of them.
Other books may tell of the glories of
the War of 1812; this book relates how
the town's militia refused to heed the
state's order to march, thus maintaining
its traditional stout independence. Vol-
umes have been written on the coming
of the railroad, but this book tells how
the Irish, whose labor laid the tracks,
lingered to help build the community.
Just as the details of living are de-
scribed, so are the larger social prob-
lems of the town's development. The
individualized home care of the poor, the
responsibility for public education, the
treatment of the mentally ill and the
feeble-minded, are traced from the point
of view which has made the author a
leader in many fields of social welfare.
Such chapter heads as Broad Planning —
Social Foundations Laid for All Time,
Peace and Home Development— New
Elegancies in Dress and a New Church
for Their Display, Conformity to Chang-
ing Fashions — Political Ardor, Prohibi-
tion Reaction, Style in Dress and Reli-
gio'us Calm, hint at their contents and re-
veal the author's style and treatment.
The book was commissioned by North-
field as its town history, and it includes
necessarily much genealogical detail.
However the "begats" are so flavored
with anecdote and humor as to make them
extremely engaging.
The format and illustrations are ex-
cellent. A biographical section of North-
field men of achievement concludes the
book.
Boston, Mass.
BENEDICT S. AI.PER
Fathers and Sons
OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY IN AN AMER-
ICAN COMMUNITY, by Percy E. Davidson
and H. Dewey Anderson. Stanford University
Press. 203 pp. Price $3.25 postpaid of The
Survey.
Y)O sons inherit the occupations of
their fathers, and fathers of their
fathers? If not, what are the factors that
determine a man's occupation? In this
day of swift technological change, to
what extent do differences in occupations
originate in social conditions of an insti-
tutional character? Can education assist
in directing men to jobs that turn and
shift in the industrial scene like the rest-
less mosaic of the kaleidoscope?
The report by Davidson and Ander-
son of a "pilot" study of some twelve
hundred men in three hundred occupa-
tions bristles with scholarly answers to
these and other questions. The aim is to
supply working hypotheses for vocational
That Spain's Children May Live *
SOCIAL WORKERS
COMMITTEE
Executive Committee
Harald H. Lund,
Chairman
Helen M. Harris.
Wayne McMlll»n.
Vice-ChairroeD
A. Gordon Hamilton
Treasurer
Mary E. Boretz
M. Antoinette Cannon
Mildred Fairchild
Jacob Fisher
Ben Goldman
Harry Greenstein
Peter Kasius
John A. Kingsbury
Wayne McMillen.
Mary van Kleeck
National Committee
(Partial List)
Lillian D. Wald
Honorary Chairman
Edith Abbott
Mauri ne Boie
Grace L. Coyle
Neva Deardorff
Leah Feder
Sheldon Glueck
Helen Hall
Marion Hathway
Paul Kellogg
Eduard C. Lindeman
Owen R. Lovejoy
Harry L. Lurie
Bertha C. Reynolds
Mary Simkhovitch
Walter West
An Organization Is Formed
• Social workers, by the very nature of their
profession, must be concerned with the wel-
fare of children who are victims of the fascist
invasion of Spain.
For this reason, the Social Workers Com-
mittee, organized in February, 1937, and
engaged in the following months in raising
over $5000 for medical aid, now turns its
attention to child welfare.
Purposes
• The purposes of the Social Workers Com-
mittee are:
(1) To raise funds for the care of children
in Republican Spain; and
(2) To offer professional advice and
guidance to organizations giving aid to
children in Republican Spain.
SOCIAL WORKERS COMMITTEE
For Child
130 East 22nd Street
Help Now!
• A national campaign is in progress to
raise funds, clothe and shelter the refugee
children. That Spain's children may live,
send contributions and pledges to the nation-
al office of the Social Workers Committee or
to your local city chapter of the Committee.
Help Now!
Make checks payable to "Social Workers Committee."
I enclose $ that Spain's children may
live.
Name
Address
City
State
Organization
TO AID SPANISH DEMOCRACY
Welfare
• New York City
In anyii'criiif/ advertisements please mention SURVKY MIDMONTHI.Y
303
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first insertion, $1.00. Cash with orders. Discounts: 5% on three insertions; 10% on
six insertions. Address Advertising Department.
4-749.
SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
WORKERS WANTED
Well trained and experienced man worker with
Child Guidance and Juvenile Delinquency
Agency. Jewish. 7456 Survey.
WANTED: Superintendent for Jewish Sheltering
Home for Children. Woman, trained in social
service. Present population of Home — 20,
State age, qualifications and salary expected.
Write to Mrs. George Kaufman, 1212 Russell
Ave., No., Minneapolis, Minn.
SITUATIONS WANTED
Man, experienced supervisor in family case
work, desires position. Member American
Association of Social Workers. Catholic.
Excellent references. 7452 Survey.
Secretary to someone doing research in social
sciences. Young woman trained education
with commercial course. Vicinity New York.
7453 Survey.
MATRON — DIETITIAN— 12 years' experience
wishes position Jewish Institution. Excellent
references. 7413 Survey.
Experienced child welfare worker desires posi-
tion as visitor, homefinder, juvenile court work
or children's clinic. Able to drive car and has
knowledge of stenography. 7457 Survey.
Widow — experienced child-welfare field desires
position with progressive institution, problem
boys or girls, assist superintendent or be
cottage-mother. 7458 Survey.
WANTED: Position in religious or social work
as Executive Club Leader or Resident Worker.
Would consider traveling job. Graduate and
Post-Graduate study. Experience in Home Eco-
nomics, etc. 20 years work with women and
girls. 7455 Survey.
APPLICANTS for positions are sincerely
urged by the Advertising Department to
send copies of letters of references rather
than originals, as there is great danger of
originals being lost or mislaid.
Your Own Agency
This is the counseling and placement agency
sponsored jointly by the American Associa-
tion of Social Workers and the National
Organization for Public Health Nursing,
National, Non-Proflt making.
' / T//*" / 9
M£ l/trCtU limed' Q/stxv\(
(Agency)
122 East 22nd Street, 7th floor. New York
MISCELLANEOUS
Believing some men and women are burdened,
anxious, needing help in meeting perplexing
personal problems, a retired physician offers
friendly counsel for those who desire it. No
fees. 7419 Survey.
SUPPLYING INSTITUTIONAL TRADE
SEEMAN BROS., INC.
Groceries
Hudson and North Moore Streets
New York
LITERARY SERVICE
Special articles, theses, speeches, papers. Re-
search, revision, bibliographies, etc. Over
twenty years' experience serving busy pro-
fessional persons. Prompt service extended.
AUTHORS RESEARCH BUREAU, 616
Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y.
PAMPHLETS AND PERIODICALS
The American Journal of Nursing shows the part
which professional nurses take in the better-
ment of the world. Put it in your library. $3.00
a year. BO West 50 Street. New York. N. Y.
to EMPLOYERS
Who Are Planning to Increase Their Staffs
We Supply:
Executives
Gate Workers
Recreation Workers
Psychiatric Social Workeri
Occupational Therapists
Dietitians
Housekeepers
Matrons
Housemothers
Teachers
Grid. Nurses
Sec'y-Stenois.
Stenographers
Bookkeepers
Typists
Telephone Operators
HOLMES EXECUTIVE PERSONNEL
One East 42nd Street
Agency Tel. : MU 2-7575 Gertrude D. Holmes, Dinctor
New York City
Start Right
this Fall by listing your organiza-
tion in the Survey's Directory of
Social Agencies.
A representative will gladly call
and talk over rates.
Write
ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT
112 East 19 St.
or call
ALgonquin 4-7490
Please Remit
cash with order
in sending Class-
ified Advertise-
ments to Survey Graphic or Survey
Midmonthly.
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CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING DEPT.
112 East 19 St. New York City
education. With the help of over a hun-
dred statistical tables and diagrams, the
reader is given a bird's-eye view of the
occupational lives of 7 percent of all
gainfully occupied males enumerated in
the 1930 census for San Jose, Calif. The
investigation was made under a grant
from the Social Science Research Coun-
cil of Stanford University.
All occupations fall into the six social-
economic groupings of A. B. Edwards of
the U. S. Bureau of the Census: pro-
fessional, proprietors and executives,
clerks and salesmen, skilled, semi-skilled,
unskilled. The authors gave these groups
their positions on the occupational ladder
and observed their vertical and hori-
zontal movement, their occupational in-
heritance, schooling, nature of first oc-
cupation and the stability of their em-
ployment. Some of the outstanding dis-
coveries were: that the preponderance of
sons did not move far from the father's
level, with skilled workers' sons show-
ing more occupational inheritance than
any other level (45 percent) ; that sons
of clerks and salesmen tend to be
"climbers," moving up to proprietor and
professional levels rather than into man-
ual labor; that 59 percent of the work-
ing life of skilled men and 48 percent of
that of semi-skilled men was spent in
their regular occupations.
More studies of this kind should be
made to build up a body of information
to enlighten our effort to adjust to
changing methods of production with the
least amount of pain. In this sample, the
overweighting of farmers and teachers
and the absence of mass production
workers prevent generalizations, as the
authors point out, but the findings are
interesting and provocative.
ELIZABETH FAULKNER BAKER
Barnard College
Hostility Patterns
STUDIES IN SIBLING RIVALRY, by David
M. Levy, M.D. American Orthopsychiatric As-
sociation. 96 pp. Price $1.25 cloth, $1 paper,
postpaid of The Survey.
t_I ERE Dr. Levy presents a study of
play technique based upon testing
children in controlled situations, with
standardized stimulations, to determine
the degree of aggression developed as an
expression of sibling rivalry. Using a
practiced methodology he succeeds in
making a careful analysis of his studies
originally developed at the Institute of
Child Guidance. It represents a helpful
objective approach to the study of
phantasy and motives of children in their
various degrees of aggression towards
their younger brothers and sisters. This
is an unusually clear exposition of a
definite method of studying hostility pat-
terns of children, as revealed through
play situations organized to satisfy the
requirements of an experimental pro-
cedure.
New York IRA S. WILE, M.D.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
304
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
Publication Office:
762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
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To which all communications should be sent
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Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIPPLE, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRIGO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, contributing editors.
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
OCTOBER 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 10
Frontispiece 306
Transiency=Mobility in Trouble ELIZABETH WICKEXDEN 307
Professionalism in Social Welfare LEROY A. RAMSDELL 309
Where Volunteers Come Natural 311
The Reports I've Seen NATALIE w. LINDERHOLM 312
Social Work at the Paris Exposition WALTER M. BAUM 314
For Doubly Handicapped Children 315
t
Miss Bailey Says: "Brace Up, Theodore" GERTRUDE SPRINGER 316
The Common Welfare 318
The Social Front 320
Public Assistance • WPA • Compensation • Schools and
Education • Jobs and Workers • For Industrial Peace •
Old Age Benefits • Old Age Assistance • The Public's Health
• Neighbor's Health • Professional • People and Things
The Pamphlet Shelf 329
Readers Write 330
Book Reviews 332
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• I remain a colored woman in Christ.
• I have had a fiance for over six years —
not in an extravagant way.
• I only used my car to haul in washings for
my frail and already overworked wife to do.
• You see Mr. President, I do not want any
more children but I havent money enough to
do otherwise.
• My husband had his project cut off three
weeks ago and we havent had any relief
since.
• I have tryed all I could possibly do — first
God and then you — and you are the only one
I can trust."
• I have told the relief board about my
shape and they say it is because I live on
my father's farm.
• Ive tryed since last June to get in the in-
sane asylum but they dont seem to want me
because I am not insane. The joke is on them.
• I hear that the WPA are employing writ-
ers and I hereby apply for a position. I have
never written anything so I ought to be
chuck full of ideas.
• I appreciate the roof and food you dole
out to me but how would you like to go year
after year without pleasure? No radio, no
bathing at beaches, no teeth filled, no head-
ache medicine, no yarn to knit, no fruit to
can, no jars. O!
So They Say
This column gives itself this month to
quotations from that bit of Americana,
Dear Mr. President, a slim little book
in which the former chief of the corres-
pondence division of FERA and WPA
has brought together some of the things
simple folk say when they write to
Mr. Roosevelt to tell him their troubles
and usually to ask him for something.
Humor, yes, but often with it a reveal-
ing confidence that puts pathos close
behind. [Dear Mr. President, by Ben
Whitehurst. Dutton. 95 pp. Price $1
postpaid of The Survey.]
• My wife works all night and she never gets
any pay but that is better than nothing.
• I am writing this letter in longhand so
that your stenographer may not know its
contents. I don't even want you to tell Mrs.
Roosevelt about it.
• I was born in that same house that my
father and grandfather was born in. My
naval cord was cut by his mother so you
know that I am a real American. I am good
stock. My nationality is white.
• I am an active social worker with a great
big following.
• I have decided to go to work. I want
somebody to just take me as I am.
• We lost our mule. Please give us your as-
sistance in making a crop. Let us know at
once.
• I have to keep my eight children home
from school because they only have one pair
of pants.
• Now, listen, your relief doctor can cut on
my stomack all he wants to just so he leaves
my ears alone.
• It is not my contention to render myself a
lassitudinous creature, but it is my aspiration
to honestly slave to earn my existence.
• I heard tell the Government was going to
give to humans and cattle. Well I am not a
human neither am I a cow, but I am a
widow with four children.
• I am not so well, hope these lines will
find you the same. I cant get a fitting place
to stay. I want you to please paper me a
house of my own. Write me and let me know
where to come.
• I am a woman 38 years old. My man
works in coal mines but most of the time we
live on relief. In my first 11 years of mar-
riage I gave birth to 10 children including
the twins, and in the next 10 years 6 chil-
dren. Thats why I cant have money.
Social science discussion classes and case study are
part of the curriculum throughout the nursing course
The student nurse makes visits to patients' homes with
a worker from the hospital social service department
Each student has practice in psychiatric nursing and
some knowledge of occupational and recreational therapy
The student gets practical experience in public health
nursing under the guidance of a visiting nurse service
Widening Horizons in Nursing Education
These selected scenes from a motion picture, Nurses in the Making, just finished
by the Harmon Foundation's Division of Visual Experiment, show the developments
in nursing training which bring the nurse closer to the social worker. The film
was prepared with the cooperation of the New York Hospital School of Nursing and
the Visiting Nurse Service of Henry Street Settlement. It is designed to acquaint
a public interested in community health and those who advise young people on
careers, with modern standards of nursing education and professional opportunities
THE SURVEY
OCTOBER 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 10
Transiency=Mobility in Trouble
By ELIZABETH WICKENDEN
Assistant to the Deputy Administrator, WPA; former Assistant Director, Transient Activities, FERA
NOW that the heat which centered around the
FERA transient program, both its operation and
its discontinuance, largely has dissipated itself
with the passing of practically the last remnants of that
program, a new consideration of the problems of transiency
and transient relief seems indicated. The time is ripe for a
seasoned consideration, a re-analysis and a re-evaluation of
the whole experience. The migrant labor survey of the
Department of Labor should bring out new facts and de-
velop fresh thinking. Moreover the possibility of a new
federal department of welfare, with the new orientation of
the federal government in the total welfare picture which
such a department would involve, offers an excellent oppor-
tunity for the consideration of transiency as a phase of the
total welfare problem.
Transients have suffered too long at the hands of their
friends as well as of their enemies from the hazy thinking
and unrestrained emotion which a romantic heritage in-
spires. Obviously the fact that an individual has either from
choice or necessity moved from one place to another does
not in itself make him either better or worse, either more
commonplace or more romantic than any other. Neverthe-
less the tradition of the pioneer, the footloose adventurer
and a little of the highway robber, still colors our national
attitudes toward transiency. Moreover, to those who, as
we say, have "settled" down to the cares and responsibili-
ties of a world too often dull, there may be glamor in the
very idea of an unsettled person. But if we are going to
make any headway in solving his problems, we badly need
to unravel, in a simple reasonable way, the factors that set
him apart from others.
Transiency must be seen in its true perspective as a part
of our broad national problem of social and economic re-
adjustment if its particular aspects are to be isolated suc-
cessfully. There has been a tendency to view transiency in
itself as a broad, inclusive and comparatively independent
problem requiring broad, inclusive and comparatively inde-
pendent measures. This served to concentrate attention on
an otherwise easily neglected area of social maladjustment
and added to the available information on its nature. But
for a long range program the approach clearly should be
based on a broader conception.
What, in the first place, do we mean by transiency?
Literally the word involves the sense of fleeting passage.
As a social concept, however, we have both extended and
limited its meaning. We have extended it to include move-
ment of any kind but custom has conditioned us to the idea
that "transiency" is involved only when such movement
presents a social problem. In other words, transiency is the
trouble function of mobility.
MOBILITY in itself is a desirable and necessary
phenomenon if our present day economy is to func-
tion smoothly and efficiently. This means that transiency
is in no sense an absolute. It not only varies geographically
and in point of time, but is modified by a thousand differ-
ent circumstances. Today's social virtues may represent to-
morrow's social problems; one man's necessity may become
another man's burden. For example, the current attitude
of California toward newcomers was hardly characteristic
of its pioneer days. To its labor-employing farmers even
today an influx of non-residents is welcomed as an assur-
ance of a cheap and docile labor supply. In terms of the
local economy it may be highly desirable for the drought
stricken farmer to move, but his arrival, unheralded and
unwelcome, at his point of destination may constitute a
serious problem.
The problems of transiency may vary but if migration
is necessary and desirable the fact that transiency exists at
all reflects more on the inadequacy of our social and eco-
nomic organization than on the shortcomings of the individ-
uals involved. A transient is distinguished from his fellow
beings solely by the circumstance that his movement from
one place to another has created a social problem. A
transient doesn't look or behave differently from anyone
else simply because he is a transient. He doesn't require
different social measures except for those handicaps peculiar
to his transiency.
The most obvious handicap imposed by transiency is the
suspicion and hostility frequently accorded, both officially
307
and unofficially, to strangers. It would appear, however,
that this hostility is primarily characteristic of a competitive
economy and is not exhibited toward those who are clearly
outside the sphere of economic rivalry. In a community
where additional manpower is an economic asset, hostility
to strangers is practically non-existent.
Closely related to these economic considerations is the
most serious handicap under which the transient suffers.
This is his highly unfavorable position before the law. He
is a victim of our national predilection for the traditional,
if now archaic, ways of our forefathers in government. In
a day when our economy and social habits are both national
in scope we adhere fanatically to the local and state limita-
tions of public responsibility which were suited to the local
economy of the eighteenth century. The existence of legal
areas of responsibility, in no way congruent to the area of
our social and economic functioning, necessarily handicaps
any person who moves out of these areas. For artificial
legal areas of responsibility give rise to artificial legal bar-
riers, and residence requirements throw a tight-knit wall
around the benefits which these governmental units extend
to their own citizens. The newcomer finds this wall effec-
tively denying him his right as a citizen, the franchise;
frequently excluding his children from the public schools;
and above all making it impossible for him to secure the
benefits in the field of public welfare which local citizens
through long years of struggle, have won for themselves.
The fact that we have allowed communities (and states)
to establish their own definition of residence and have ex-
tended none of the protection of public responsibility to
those excluded by their definition, constitutes the major
handicap of the transient.
THERE are clearly two major and distinct avenues of
approach to a solution of the problems of transiency.
The first of these is the positive approach of prevention in-
volving long-time and sweeping readjustments in our social
and economic structure. The social reforms which would
tend to eliminate transiency are for the most part those
which are needed to meet the major problems of our time:
unemployment, improper land use, and the insecurity of the
individual due to these and other conditions of the modern
economy. As steps are taken toward the solution of these
problems, transiency will be proportionately reduced.
Such a program of fundamental reform is, however,
necessarily slow in realization. For the present the interest
and efforts of those concerned primarily with transient
problems must be devoted largely to the negative approach,
that is, to remedial measures designed to mitigate the effect
of those specific handicaps which transiency now imposes.
This effort has unfortunately been handicapped in two
ways. First there has been a belief on the part of advocates
of the former transient program that its discontinuance
dealt a stunning if not fatal blow to all efforts in behalf
of the transient. Second, and more important, has been
the absence of a clearly defined sense of objective in the
effort expended. This confusion, reflecting a lack of under-
standing of the problem in terms of its simplest, irreducible
essentials, unfortunately characterized the activities of the
transient program as well as the inactivity that followed
its demise.
Perhaps those who have worked closely with a program
have special privilege in giving it a critical backward
glance. In any case all of us who are interested in seeing
the problem solved have an obligation to look back critic-
ally and dispassionately, for in the FERA transient pro-
gram we have our only experience with an effort to meet
the problem as it must be met, that is, nationally. Obviously
any proposal or any program which does not reckon with
the mistakes and hard-won knowledge of the past will fail.
The FERA transient program was conceived, nurtured
and raised to maturity by people who had fought a hard
battle for transients and who were determined to protect
their gains. They fought fiercely to protect their infant
program from what they had held in the past to be an un-
friendly officialdom and too frequently an unfriendly pub-
lic. Newcomers to the field caught the contagion and be-
came advocates first and administrators only second. This
approach quickly bred a series of attitudes which, under
the misleading guise of a "philosophy," led the program
into byways which turned out to be blind alleys instead of
the long road to progress.
First there was the temptation, too long unresisted, to
let the program lose all identity with the rest of the relief
program in order to gain an entity of its own. The very
persistence of the term Federal Transient Bureau, despite
the legal reality, was evidence of this. State transient di-
rectors took their directions from and their troubles to the
federal office. Many state relief administrators either re-
fused responsibility for the transient program or ignored its
existence. Locally the situation was even more extreme
where relief offices for residents and non-residents func-
tioned side by side with duplicating machinery, conflicting
policies and not infrequent rivalry. The fact that relief for
transients, paid entirely from federal funds, tended to be
more generous than relief for local people fostered resent-
ment among the latter. The fact that Transient Bureau
officials isolated themselves and their clients from the regu-
lar relief machinery left the program in a doubly weak
position.
REPARATION of administrative control necessarily
>J gave rise to segregation of transients and a tendency
to view transiency as a social province all but self-contained
in its problems, a neat if complex little microcosm. Seg-
regation led to further segregation and in turn to the crea-
tion of new problems. The development of the transient
camp program for single men was a good example of the
process. Camps were started first as an administrative ex-
pedient and their advantages remained principally on the
side of the administrative staff although they soon acquired
a thick and stubborn philosophical sugar coating. They
were praised on the following counts: rural life was mor-
ally and physically healthy and camp life had "therapeutic
value" for transients; local antagonism was avoided; tran-
sients were stabilized, they were removed from the labor
market; it was easier to maintain discipline; it was more
frequently possible to find useful public work which they
could perform.
Actually while the camps simplified life for harassed
transient directors, they removed the transient from all pos-
sible contact with private employment, from normal so-
ciety, from contact with women and normal family rela-
tionships and sent him into the segregated, adolescent bar-
rack life of an isolated camp. Most serious of all was the
way in which the camp program tended to brand men, once
and for all, as "transients" — a breed apart. This seems in-
evitably to have carried with it a sense of stigma, a belief,
not always conscious or expressed, that transiency was a
social evil requiring corrective "therapeutic" measures. In
308
THE SURVEY
this way transiency came to be associated in the minds of
the men as well as of the public with the tradition of hobo-
ism. Transients, turned in upon themselves, tended to make
a cult out of transiency and men, too long segregated, re-
moved from the mainstream of our society and economy,
came to exhibit certain characteristic maladjustments.
It seems to me fundamental that any future approach
to the problems of transiency should avoid this endless
circle of cause and effect by considering remedial measures
in terms of specific handicaps to be overcome. Unemploy-
ment, illness, dependency are general problems in no sense
restricted to transients. The specific problem of the tran-
sient we have seen to be his exclusion from the benefits ex-
tended by law to local residents, and secondarily the preju-
dice exhibited toward any stranger believed to be a possible
economic rival. These are the problems toward which our
efforts and planning should be directed. And even though
federal funds may offer a solution on both counts, it must
not be forgotten that a federal transient program involv-
ing separate administration, different policies and above all
segregation could only aggravate these problems and post-
pone still further their ultimate solution.
Professionalism in Social Welfare
By LEROY A. RAMSDELL
Executive Secretary, Council of Social Agencies, Hartford, Conn.
MANY people are troubled these days by the grow-
ing professionalization of social welfare activities.
There is, I believe, some basis for their concern,
but the dangers do not lie always where they are supposed
to be, and the forces underlying the trend are not clearly
understood. Not a little of the prevailing confusion and dis-
agreement is due to the great variety of meanings attached
to the terms professional and professionalism. In this dis-
cussion professional will be used only in its most general
sense, denoting a person who derives his livelihood from the
pursuit of social welfare work; the not too happy word,
expert, will be used to designate the technically trained pro-
fesssional.
The growth of professionalism in social welfare is essen-
tially a twentieth century phenomenon although it began
considerably earlier. Reliable statistics as to the number
of professional social workers in the United States were
lacking up to 1930 when the U. S. Census under separate
classifications counted 31,241 social and welfare workers
and 4270 probation and truant officers. On the basis of
these figures, making reasonable allowances for social work-
ers reported in other classifications, Ralph G. Hurlin of
the Russell Sage Foundation estimated the number of pro-
fessional social workers in the country in 1930 to be be-
tween 40,000 and 42,500. This number probably was more
than doubled in 1934 when the FERA was at its zenith.
At the present time there are somewhat fewer, perhaps
between 60,000 and 70,000.
Undoubtedly this spectacular increase in the number of
employed social workers has brought to many people a new
awareness of the trend to professionalism. But many of the
fears of this tendency do not seem to arise solely from the
mere increase in numbers. Impatience and resentment against
increased taxes doubtless account in some measure for the
growing feeling against professionalism. But after all such
irrelevant factors are discounted there remains a genuine
apprehension about this professional movement.
In considering this feeling of apprehension, certain fun-
damental factors underlying the trend itself cannot be ig-
nored. Most important perhaps is the increase in the number
of people needing welfare services. In one fairly typical
city, for example, the average number of families on relief
per month in 1916 was approximately 100. In 1929 the
number was 750 and in 1935, 6690. Up to 1929 other
forms of human need exhibited a similar trend though
not in the same degree.
It is one thing, in a city of 130,000 to provide the necessi-
ties of life for 100 families every month through the direct
ministrations of the citizens and in 1916 a substantial part
of relief and other welfare work was done in that way.
But obviously it is quite a different matter for the citizens,
by purely voluntary effort, to take care of six or seven
thousand families. It is merely a sign of the times that in
every city of any size this last depression witnessed the
breakdown of the tradition of volunteer relief committees.
The task of caring for the casualties of our social and eco-
nomic evolution has outgrown volunteer proportions.
ANOTHER important factor in the growth of profes-
sionalism is the increasing distance between those who
would help and those who need help. In most of our cities
these two groups live, in the main, on opposite sides of
town. He who would do his own good neighboring must
travel miles where his grandfather needed only to go down
the street. This geographical separation might not be a seri-
ous obstacle were it not accompanied by the phenomenon
which sociologists call "social distance." Moving now in
widely separated social circles, the philanthropist and his
unfortunate fellow man, with very rare exceptions, have
not even the common meeting ground of established ac-
quaintance, much less the mutual understanding necessary
for the one truly to help the other. Consequently with the
increasing numbers of people needing help of various kinds,
"organized charity" with its attendant professionalism be-
came a practical necessity.
One more contributing factor must be touched upon.
It appears in two aspects: the increasing difficulty of the
human problems to be solved, and a parallel growth of
understanding of the complexity of those problems and the
methods of dealing with them. Before the days of ten-ton
trucks, a bridge entirely adequate to the needs of traffic
could be constructed of heavy timbers by a master carpenter.
In those days, also, a neighborly philanthropy based upon a
few simple rules of human behavior sufficed, for the most
part, to keep society in a reasonably satisfactory state of
equilibrium; a system based upon classification of the poor
as worthy or unworthy, and of behavior as mischievous or
downright bad was at least workable. Today it is not.
With a closed economic system, it takes more than a pat
on the back to make things right for the unemployed man
This article is drawn in part from an address made by Mr. Ramsdell
before the Laymen's School of Social Welfare, Hartford.
OCTOBER 1937
309
and his family. If he has been out of work very long, it may
take study and skillful work to enable him to get back to a
self-supporting basis. In our millions of never-employed
young people we have a problem of staggering proportions
which will require all the science and skill that can be
brought to its solution. With all the best intentions in the
world such problems as these can never be dealt with on
a volunteer avocational basis.
Clearly, therefore, there is no choice for those who, for
one reason or another, are uneasy about the growth of pro-
fessionalism in social welfare. The most they can hope to
do is to guide an inevitable development so that the evils
which they fear may be avoided as far as possible. People
differ, of course, as to what constitute the evils of profes-
sionalism. Nevertheless, there are four aspects of the pro-
fessional movement in social welfare which seem to be
especially frequent sources of annoyance or distrust to lay-
men. I shall call them fanaticism, radicalism, bureaucracy
and expertness.
PROFESSIONAL social workers often are criticized for
their tendency to .follow cults or fads. No one can deny
that in some measure the criticism has been justified. Chiefly
responsible, it seems to me, for current attitudes of distrust
on the part of laymen is the mental hygiene approach which
gained enthusiastic acceptance among professional workers
in the late twenties. During that period mental hygiene
courses were introduced into schools of social work and
other curricula and were filled to overflowing. Social work-
ers varied, of course, in the degree to which they were
affected by their usually superficial exposures to the myster-
ies of psychiatry. Probably the great majority of well
trained social workers have always sought to use the men-
tal hygiene approach with discrimination. This group has
been less conspicuous, however, than the many inadequately
trained workers who could not resist the temptation to ex-
ercise their smattering of information, or the few well
trained enthusiasts who have sought ardently to convert
the entire profession to the mental hygiene faith. As a
consequence the lay public inevitably has come to con-
sider all social workers as mental hygiene doctrinaires and
has tended to repudiate the professional social worker for
this supposed fanaticism. This reaction has been one of
the cornerstones of the "cult of common sense" which so
frequently is cited by those who discount the need for
training for social workers.
Another common source of lay dissatisfaction is rooted
in a persistently enduring reaction against a still earlier
cult — the idea that it was essential to unearth all the as-
certainable facts about the client and his antecedents and to
record them in voluminous case records. This idea has long
since ceased to dominate (if it ever did) the work of the
majority of well trained professional workers who have a
far better sense of proportion about case records than the
layman usually gives them credit for. However, professional
workers still are criticized for inquisitiveness and red tape
on account of early over-emphasis on a useful device.
Radicalism of the sort which gives rise to current fears
of a growing professionalism in social welfare is really,
I think, another kind of fad. To be sure, a scarlet thread
runs through the whole history of the social welfare move-
ment. Social welfare agencies are inevitably concerned with
the elimination of the inadequacies and injustices of social
institutions. This deep running current of reform is not,
however, the result of growing professionalism. The great
reformers of the social welfare movement have been, and
still are, as often laymen as professionals.
The radicalism which I have in mind at the moment
is a more specifically professional phenomenon. There is a
group within the ranks of professional social workers which
is ardently endeavoring to persuade the entire profession
to abandon its traditional methods of dealing with poverty,
sickness and crime. Impressed, as we all are, with the
failure of our institutions to provide any measure of security
for a large fraction of our population, this group argues
that professional social workers should align themselves
with workers' movements and seek to bring about a drastic
reorganization of our social and economic order. For the
most part these groups are recruited from the staffs of
public relief administrations in the larger cities. Underpaid,
overworked, often subjected to the most impossible working
conditions, they constitute a fertile field for the growth of
dissatisfaction with the present industrial order. Usually un-
trained technically they have neither the prospects for ad-
vancement which might give them courage to struggle with
present difficulties, nor the understanding of social problems
and scientific social work methods which would give them
the perspective necessary to recognize, on the one hand, the
imperfections of their own program and, on the other, the
solid, even though limited, accomplishments of the more
traditional forms of social work. The situation in which
these workers find themselves is more than a personal trag-
edy for them. It is a discreditable chapter in the history of
the social welfare movement in America.
If the public welfare service, particularly in our local
communities, were adequately staffed with competent so-
cial workers, reasonably well paid, provided with the facili-
ties necessary to good work including adequate relief funds,
and assured of security of tenure during good behavior,
radicalism in social welfare would soon cease to be a cause
of concern. Many thoughtful citizens, however, are re-
luctant to strengthen the public welfare services because of
their fear of bureaucracy. This fear, I believe, is a reaction
against manifest incompetence in many public employes
which is erroneously thought to be inherent in the public
service. Incompetence in our public welfare services merely
reflects our own shortcomings as citizens. In many cases
we get much better service than we deserve. For not only
have we sanctioned incompetent welfare administrations
but we have given them every inducement to do their
worst by our bitter complaints against the taxes necessary to
finance their half-way services.
WHAT should we do about it? First, take politics out
of relief, local and national — but especially local. Poli-
tics in national relief hardly can hold a candle to politics in
local relief. Second, establish the merit system throughout
all welfare administrations with salary schedules adequate
to get trainable if not trained people. Third, see that thor-
oughly qualified professional people are placed in all re-
sponsible key positions in all welfare organizations. In a
word, build up a competent bureaucracy to take the place
of the more or less incompetent one which is now disburs-
ing between 5 and 10 percent of our national income.
Professionalism in its aspect of expertness is an indis-
pensable corrective for the evils of professionalism in
some of its other aspects. Yet some people seem to fear this
very aspect of expertness. A friend of mine, who happened
to be in the position of legal adviser to the authorities of
the town in which he lived, apparently considered that he
310
THE SURVEY
had done his Community a real service when he made it pos-
sible to appoint a political favorite to an important wel-
fare post by discovering (presumably in the dictionary)
that the phrase "trained in social and welfare work" does
not mean what all competent social workers would agree
that it does mean in this connection.
Frequently associated with fears of expertness in profes-
sional social workers is the manifest conviction that a lot
of good common sense is all anyone needs to do social
work. This cult of common sense seems to be blocking the
action which the public must take to rid itself of the evils
of incompetent professionalism in the social welfare field.
There need be no fear that the prerogatives of the layman
in social welfare activities will suffer curtailment through
increasing the competence of professional workers. On the
contrary it is the incompetent professional worker who most
frequently usurps the layman's legitimate functions. Com-
petent professionals recognize the impossibility of solving
problems deeply rooted in the daily life of our communi-
ties without the active participation and leadership of lay-
men. Wherever the layman reciprocates this esteem a most
fruitful partnership is possible. Then expertness may be
spared the futility of an inbred idealism; and common
sense, the ignominy of foolish mistakes.
A professional bureaucracy of one kind or another we
are going to have whether we want it or not. The social
problems of the twentieth century cannot be dealt with on
any other basis. To those who may disagree with that con-
clusion I recommend an article, Some Thoughts on the
Politics of Government Control, by Carl Joachim Fred-
erick, in The Journal of Social Philosophy, January 1936.
It seems to me clear that it rests with the lay public to de-
termine whether the social problems confronting it are to
be treated and solved as far as possible through the con-
structive service of a competent professionalism or made
worse through the bungling of an incompetent one.
Where Volunteers Come Natural
Wi
'AY out West in Washington, where the pioneer
past was only yesterday, there has grown up
side by side with old age assistance an original
and indigenous program of social work called "friendly
visiting." True to pioneer tradition, Washington makes the
most of all her natural resources, the capacities of social-
minded citizens no less than the more obvious blessings of
nature. Social work in the state has grown up largely
through voluntary and neighborly activities; even the first
shocks of the depression were met chiefly by volunteers.
"Making the most of volunteer service is perfectly
natural in a state in which professional social work has
had a short history and that only in large population cen-
ters," explained John F. Hall, staff assistant of the new
Washington State Department of Social Security. In de-
scribing the recent state-wide growth of community wel-
fare councils and the "friendly visiting program" which
has been carried on largely by the councils, with depart-
ment sponsorship and stimulus, he pointed out, "It is mere-
ly common sense that such accustomed citizen participa-
tion should be conserved in the new social security and
state welfare programs."
Throughout the length and breadth of that colorful
state — in Camano Island, Kittitas County, White Salmon
of Klickitat, the Duckabush Valley — in virtually every
county these councils are giving a variety of services and
filling many local needs which the over busy state depart-
ment staff alone could not begin to handle. In addition to
the friendly visiting program for old age assistance clients,
practically every council has carried on campaigns to de-
velop jobs in private industry, and has made surveys of
community resources. While definitely welfare councils,
these are not councils of social agencies but of the whole
community. Their membership includes, along with any
local social agencies, chambers of commerce, parent-teacher
associations, granges, service clubs, labor unions, fraternal
groups, women's clubs, business organizations, local, county
and state officials. Although the state department suggests
suitable projects and steers the councils in activities suited
to community needs, its function is largely that of coordi-
nator, with the hope that eventually the communities, not
the department, will do the sponsoring. Ideally the local
public welfare unit will participate in the council on the
same basis as any other agency.
The "friendly visiting" programs are designed to help
lonely and helpless old folk who need much more than the
monthly old age assistance check. As a result of home ties
broken by pioneering and the Alaska "gold rush," there is
in Washington a high percentage of old folk lacking the
degree of security represented by family contacts. Actually,
20 percent of the old age assistance recipients in the state
live alone, with home ties almost forgotten.
With regular visitors from the state department almost
overwhelmed by the initial job -of determining eligibility,
it has remained for the friendly visitors to help the old
people reestablish community and personal contacts, and to
perform little neighborly services such as reading aloud,
providing automobile rides, helping with a hobby, bringing
books from the library and so on. Serious problems of health
and housing, too, come to light through friendly visitors'
services.
WHILE there is no precise technique and the only prin-
ciple stipulated is a friendly interest, the state has pre-
pared a manual for these volunteer visitors, copies of which
have been sent to all counties where programs are organ-
ized. Basic information on the old age assistance law, an
explanation of the duties of professional visitors as well
as the purpose of the whole security program and of volun-
teer activities are included. An important result has been
the better interpretation of the whole social security pro-
gram to the community.
In one remote valley the representative of the state game
department is a one-man friendly visiting committee who
enjoys having someone to call upon as much as the lonely
old folk enjoy an outside contact. To a friendly visitor in
another county an old man confided his longing for a cake
"like mother used to make." At her next call, the visitor
turned in and baked a cake which satisfied all his mem-
ories. Another county reports that friendly visiting has
started a considerable epidemic of unofficial and unsolicited
friendly aid to needy old folk. A county made up of three
islands has three councils, with a recreation project on one
island and a child welfare program on another, while the
OCTOBER 1937
311
third has concentrated on securing a public health nurse.
A teeth and tonsil clinic for school children is the boast
of another community's welfare council. Community recrea-
tion and education programs, monthly meetings with speak-
ers, and child welfare committees are typical activities.
An historical project, sponsored not by the councils but
by WPA under the direction of the state department, has
afforded a new and highly satisfying outlet for the "old
timers." Asked for their reminiscences of the early days
they warm to a genuinely interested audience and enjoy
especially the fact that their stories are being "taken down."
The material so gathered, a unique and irreplaceable rec-
ord, will be assembled for the state archives.
The state department began working on local councils
early in 1936, through staff representatives and citizen com-
mittees. As the councils grew, it was found that often they
formed more naturally around a community than on a
county-wide basis. The communities in turn sometimes
have formed county councils. A few months ago there were
among the state's thirty-nine counties, thirty-two more or
less active county councils and six counties with community
councils or committees. Only one was entirely unorganized.
The picture is not all rosy. Organization difficulties
have blocked progress in some places. Leadership sometimes
has been divided and sometimes has been entirely lacking.
Some local organizers have been short on skill. But as a
whole, the councils are providing a means of community
participation in Washington's new social security and state
welfare programs and helping to root them in the soil in
which they must grow.
The Reports I've Seen
By NATALIE W. LINDERHOLM
Department of Social Work Interpretation, Russell Sage Foundation
DURING the late spring and summer of this report-
making year of 1937 the annual reports of some
eighty social agencies were garnered at random from
The Survey's mailbag in an effort to discover what kind of
face these agencies turn to their public in what is, for many
of them, their most important effort of the year in interpret-
ing their purpose and program. While these eighty reports
represent only a fraction of the year's output of social agen-
cies they box the compass in more ways than one. Geo-
graphically they reach into every corner of the United
States and across two oceans; the Philippines and Hawaii,
California, Minnesota, Kansas, Illinois and Iowa, Ohio and
Alabama; north and south on the Atlantic seaboard, London
— all are represented. In range of services the reporting
organizations — fifty:nine private agencies and twenty-one
public departments — extend from research to health educa-
tion and the conservation of national resources; from the
care of a few sick children to the spending of millions of
dollars to relieve distress and destitution in large cities.
Among the reports are tomes and tabloids; volumes
approximating a city telephone book in size and weight ;
single sheets of paper folded ingeniously to the dimensions
of a postcard. The long reports, running into hundreds
of pages, come from public agencies, a fact to be explained
perhaps by the prevailing legal requirement of detailed an-
nual accounting of work done and money spent. Perhaps,
too, the varied services of public departments make it
difficult to prune reports to manageable size. Whatever the
reason, there is no gainsaying the length. Hundreds of
pages are devoted to complicated tabulations, and although
the reports are painstakingly indexed, they seldom offer the
relief of a summary to the drooping taxpayer for whose
information they are published. Hidden in their crowded
pages, however, is rewarding reading — the effort to offset the
blight of depression in a rich farming section ; the opening
up of educational frontiers; the gallant struggle to protect
public health — but all probably as safe from discovery as
if it had never been written and printed. Few readers will
go beyond the first pages before pushing these heavy volumes
aside in favor of something easier on the eye and the arm.
It is hard to say which are the less satisfactory, reports
that are too long or those that are too short. If the former
exhaust the reader by sheer bulk, the latter exasperate him
by the things left unsaid. Twelve months of activity can
seldom be recorded either fairly or adequately in a maxi-
mum of a thousand words.
Fortunately, most of the reports in the eighty examined
fall between the two extremes. Somewhere between twelve
and sixty pages in length, they are reasonably attractive
and easy to handle. Rated for the points usually counted
as essential, they meet the test with colors flying. Almost
without exception name, address, date, and the names of
executives and directors are given ; financial and service
statements are included ; material is logically organized and
usually indexed. In makeup and text, however, wide varia-
tions appear.
CONSPICUOUS among the reports are those which
show a tendency to follow where advertising has led.
This is less marked in public than in private agency reports.
The public agency, with a few striking exceptions, sticks
to its nondescript thin paper, its traditional routine layout
and hard-to-read type; but the private agency is beginning
to learn that good printing pays. Paper shows pleasing
variety of texture and tint; type faces harmonize and are
chosen with regard for length of line and size of page.
Deftly phrased captions break the text, and pages gain dig-
nity and beauty through wider margins and more effective
proportion. These may seem minor points, but they are
none the less important ; for more than most printed matter
the annual report stands or falls by the first impression it
makes. Ease in reading is a potent factor in gaining and
holding attention.
Color blazes from advertising pages, psychologists write
of its power to stir the emotions, money-raisers offer figures
to prove its value in dollars and cents; but social work
reports remain conservative. To be sure, one adventurer
runs riot with blue and silver, peach, yellow, brown and
black all in one lush booklet ; but in general the social
agencies lean towards restraint. Public agencies, if they
risk color at all, dull it with gray, giving a curiously ding)'
effect to the already drab blues and browns and greens most
favored for covers. One public agency, however, wins
immediate attention with nothing more than black and
312
THE SURVEY
white ; but the black is rich and deep in tone, and the white
is clear and true, with paper of a texture which gives sub-
stance and distinction. Another breaks the pattern with
black and silver, its cover modernistic in design, its chapter
headings curiously reminiscent of a classic frieze, vivid
silhouettes in white against a black background, the sub-
jects cleverly keyed to the text.
PRIVATE agencies seem to be more color conscious, but
budget limitations act as a brake. Few agencies make
an adequate allowance for printing, and the use of a second
color, always expensive, often seems to publicity committees
an unwarranted extravagance. Many agencies, however,
are producing excellent effects without undue cost by com-
bining ivory or white paper and brown or black ink with
covers in clear tones of blue, green, tan, occasionally yellow.
A few go further and permit themselves accents of a con-
trasting color — red is especially popular — in initials or page
decorations; now and then one finds a dash of silver or a
line or two of gold. One agency, daring more or perhaps
having more money to spend, uses a dull-surfaced white
paper banded in an unusual, almost luminous shade of
turquoise, and accented with navy blue. The result is a
booklet so distinguished in appearance that only the most
report-calloused reader could resist sampling the text which,
it should be recorded, lives up to the promise of the cover.
Again in the use of illustrations, the influence of adver-
tising may be traced. This is a picture-minded world, and
public and private agencies alike follow the trend of the
times by translating some, at least, of their statistics into
graphs. For those who prefer to take their figures digit by
digit there is no dearth of conventional tabulations — a
statistician in his lighter moments might amuse himself by
calculating how far around the world these tables would
stretch if laid end to end. The time honored skyscraper and
piece-of-pie diagrams are still with us, but many agencies
are breaking their way out of these well worn ruts into the
less traveled field of picture graphs. Readers of The Survey
know from its pages how ingenious and intriguing are the
symbols devised to give life and meaning to dull figures.
To find so many report-makers illuminating their pages in
this way is a hopeful sign that at last progress is being made
in taking the static out of statistics.
Public agencies tend to restrict the illustration of their
reports to graphs, with occasional halftones of buildings or
of persons prominent in their work, but private agencies
appear to be experimenting more freely with photo-
graphic illustration. There are still a few line drawings
and silhouettes, but with Life and Look selling out on the
newsstands, social work is taking notice. This trend towards
photographs is the more significant because the ethical
points involved are still hotly debated wherever social work-
ers and publicity secretaries foregather. Organizations with
activities programs apparently have fewer problems to meet
in this respect, but among case work agencies a strong
feeling persists that commercial photographs, often theatri-
cal and over-sentimental, misrepresent their clients, while
authentic photographs involve an indefensible breach of
confidence. Yet it is the private case work agencies which
make the most frequent and most skillful use of photographs
in their reports.
Such a development, this reviewer surmises, is not to be
construed as the crumbling of long-standing and well-
founded objections, but rather as an indication that resource-
fulness has found ways to respect client confidence and still
to take advantage of the opportunities photography offers
for winning public understanding. Certainly the better
photographs in these reports are seldom the old style lit-
eral reproductions, posed and captioned without imagina-
tion. Here captions if used at all are restrained and pene-
trating, and beauty of composition and skilful use of light
and shadow give evidence of the technical proficiency
achieved only by sympathetic cooperation between the social
worker and the competent photographer.
Protection of clients is accomplished sometimes by secur-
ing other persons to pose in their places, sometimes by such
simple expedients as posing them absorbed in work or play,
in profile, or quarter view. Posed thus, there is often greater
reality than in full-face pictures; the curve of a cheek, the
droop of a shoulder, the courage of an outflung hand, may
speak more eloquently than the surface expression of the
face. An occasional use of poignant symbolism may be noted,
and in one or two of the reports there is even an attempt
to interpret photographically that intangible, strength-giving
current that social work refers to as the client-worker rela-
tionship. In such efforts the light is focussed usually on the
social worker, with the suggestion, sometimes strikingly
successful, of an atmosphere of relaxation, confidence and
respect for personality as a background for the pictured in-
terview.
It is not for one whose camera experience begins and
ends with a Brownie Number 2 to speak with authority
here, but study of these varied photographs suggests that
there is more to this problem than finding a camera and
inducing someone to have his picture taken. Photographer,
subject and social worker must work with mutual under-
standing of the problem to be interpreted. If this creative
cooperation can be secured and the photograph based on
fundamental human emotions, translated instantly by each
person into terms of his own life, a bit of genuine interpre-
tation may be the result. Starring these reports are a few
such achievements. May there be more of them.
AvIONG these eighty reports, six or so stand out in this
reviewer's memory. The welfare department of a great
city makes a candid and informing statement of the way
in which it discharges its responsibility for good govern-
ment. A national organization discusses work with girls
and women in terms of spiritual values and the possibilities
of "making those values operative in the life of society and
the lives of individuals." A family society analyzes the cor-
roding effect of large-scale economic and social maladjust-
ment upon happiness and success in family life ; another
explains case work as a means of helping men and women
to meet strains resulting from the pressure of "everyday
problems . . . which, if intelligently faced, may be removed
as hazards to the integrity of the family and the normal de-
velopment of the individual." A relief administration sets its
work against a backdrop on which broad, sure strokes have
sketched the life of a state where in normal times the soil
offers opportunity to a hardworking, thrifty population. A
brilliant discussion of health education defines preventive
medicine as "the habit (and technique) of treating people
as if they were people and not symptom pictures . . . the art
of conserving health ... a point of view, not a clinical
entity."
These six reports differ widely in makeup, in physical
form and appearance, but they are all exceptionally well
written. They are neither overweighted with technical
words, nor blighted with tired words, with those tepid
OCTOBER 1937
313
adjectives and limp verbs that have been used and over-used
until their fine edge has been blunted, their power of swift,
sharp impression lost. Simple, direct phrasing accentuates
the vigor of thought, and gives glimpses of the power which
Robert Frost is quoted as coveting for his students, the
ability "to write of common things in an uncommon way."
Even more important, these six reports recognize and
interpret the vital relationship of their work to its wider
background. Social work has its roots in day-to-day living,
in problems which reflect the shifting strengths of the com-
munity and the country. Only when it is described thus, in
perspective, can it be seen as it really is, not a thing apart
but merging into the experience of community and people.
For another reviewer, other reports might seem preemi-
nent for in the whole eighty few fail to be impressive for
their record of service and many are noteworthy for certain
features. Reading them as a group, ranging from problem
to problem, from corner to corner of the country, one
senses the universal quality which so many of the individual
reports lack. Here are snatches of history which, one sur-
mises, are being recorded nowhere else. From these reports,
and hundreds of others like them, will come source material
for the historian, background for the novelist, perhaps a
fragment of the still unwritten epic of America.
Social Work at the Paris Exposition
By WALTER M. BAUM*
A~,L the nations that sent special exhibits to the Paris
Exposition seem to have felt that on this occasion
it was incumbent on them to demonstrate what
their technical and scientific attainments contribute toward
making life more beautiful. That probably explains why
their separate buildings are devoted more to things than to
men ; why in them one sees and hears little about social
problems. More often than not it is some small country,
proud of its social progress, which endeavors to describe
the development of its social life, but even then in terms of
interest to the general public rather than to the profes-
sional social worker.
A very different view is presented by those sections of
the exposition devoted to specific subject fields rather than
to geographical areas. Here, for instance, we find a build-
ing where the development of the natural sciences is set
forth as an expression of human adventure. Here both lay-
man and specialist will be inspired by seeing under one
roof the contributions made to welfare by physics and chem-
istry, biology, medical discovery and invention. The vari-
ous types of apparatus that aid discovery and make possible
its application also are shown, either in original examples
or in simplified drawings and models.
Several buildings are devoted more definitely to social
subjects: a pavilion designated Mother and Child, others
Public Health, Trade Union, Health Center, and, per-
haps the most important in this group, The Community —
here characteristically named Solidarity.
To understand the full significance of these exhibits, one
must know that in France old social traditions have been
preserved more fully than in any other western country.
Social work here is still organized, in the main, on the
lines of private philanthropy. For many years, while social
work in the rest of the world emerged from the stage of
private initiative and assumed public institutional forms,
France still followed its old ways. Until a few years ago
the professional social worker was pra'ctically unknown
and there were no schools for training in social skills.
Public provision extended only to a few branches of social
service which traditionally had no relation to private
effort. But in this respect, too, there has been considerable
•Americans who attended the 1932 International Conference of Social
Work in Frankfort need' no introduction to Dr. Bairni who was the ri?nt
hand of Dr. Polligkeit. the president, in the organization of that meetine.
He was for years identified with social work in Germany as administrator,
lecturer and author. He is now residing in Paris.
change in the last few years. For example, a reorganization
of child welfare is under way; and though this movement
and others of a similar nature are as yet in an early stage
of accomplishment, it is evident that in France as else-
where it is only a question of time until private philan-
thropy will have been merged in a systematic structure of
social effort. This is well illustrated in the hall of The
Community.. Some of the things shown here may strike
the foreign visitor as rather primitive; even the problems
themselves may seem, here and there, to be presented a little
too naively. Nevertheless this exhibit as a whole gives an
impressive demonstration of an essentially modern social
spirit, of a desire for systematic organization. Indeed, I
doubt if ever before this has been made graphic so force-
fully.
Another point: the French mind does not call for elab-
orate statistics and detailed social analyses. In these re-
spects the foreign social worker who comes to collect ma-
terials will hardly get his money's worth. But what this
hall of The Community has done superbly is to find artis-
tic forms of expression for social need, to describe social
effort in esthetically satisfying terms, to produce a general
effect that cannot but appeal even to those visitors who
from personal experience know little of this side of life.
This effect is produced largely by the combination of en-
larged photographs with mural paintings — thus establish-
ing definite relations between the two art forms — effective
mounting of exhibits, and especially the use of contrast by
means of dioramas.
This exhibit has nine sections. One of them carries the
mind back to medieval times by means of a series of great
paintings representing the idea of charity, the most impres-
sive of them a tryptic by the old German master, Wohlge-
muth. Related in spirit are objects exhibited in memory
of the founder of the outstanding private charity, Saint
Vincent de Paul. Likewise of historical interest are docu-
ments relating to the former custom of depositing unwanted
children at the entrances of institutions which provided for
their care — one of the earliest child welfare activities in
France. A graph in high relief gives the principal dates in
the development of charity, from the establishment of the
first hospital in the year 542, on through the creation of
public welfare offices in 1 794, to the introduction of the
forty-hour week and paid vacations in 1936 and to the
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THE SURVEY
recent coordination of social service activities sponsored by
several government departments.
In the community exhibit are sections designated: Social
Need, Organization of Social Work, Health, Family, Pro-
vision for Leisure Time, Protection of Labor, Social Ser-
vice. Through these sections, social work is represented,
not in the categories indicated by its various branches, but
rather in relation to different kinds of need in the commun-
ity. In this way it is possible to see, for example, how so-
cial insurance, savings banks, self-help, and social service
combine to protect the individual and to rid him of avoid-
able anxieties.
Among many interesting sectional exhibits, mention may
be made here of one which shows how the problem of so-
cially beneficial use of leisure time is being met, a problem
much under discussion in France since the introduction of
the forty-hour, five-day working week. Here again the
dramatic uses of contrast are brought into play to illustrate
the difference between vocational and avocational exertion :
one man's strenuous labor for his daily bread may be
another's pleasant recreation.
In connection with the community exhibit, or Solidarity
if you like the French term, a small book has been pub-
lished, offering an excellent survey of social work in France.
The visitor interested in social questions also will have
a look at the pavilion devoted to Mother and Child. Here
he will find illustrations of the work of private agencies —
unfortunately not systematically organized. This lack is
somewhat compensated for by the provision of a personal
guidance service through which the visitor may make con-
tacts with social agencies in Paris or secure courteous in-
formation about any of the social provisions or services in
France that may be of special interest to him. This service,
the centre d'accueil, also will make arrangements if re-
quested, for visits to institutions in any part of the country.
Material is being collected for a book of general informa-
tion on social work in France which, when completed, may
hold suggestions for similar compilations in other countries.
For the present, all data on social problems, institutions
and agencies, and on the literature of different branches of
social work, are available only in the form of card files.
The two halls, exhibiting The Community and Mother
and Child, are connected by a model medical center typi-
cal of those introduced in many French communities as
nuclei for a variety of health services. There is also a model
kindergarten, the clientele of which is recruited from the
children of exposition employes. Since women's labor pre-
vails in France, this practical provision meets an immedi-
ate need while serving also to demonstrate a popular social
institution. The yard where the children play has been
transformed into a miniature children's village, with small
houses and a small mill that actually works.
Not far away is the Hall of Public Health. Interesting
as a piece of architecture, this pavilion contains exhibits
relating to the various branches of public hygiene, again,
for the most part, in the form of contrasts. Here also the
focus is the need to be met and ways of meeting it. Those
looking for arrays of methods and apparatus will be dis-
appointed.
Visitors interested in city planning and urban sanitation
will find this exhibit supplemented in important respects
in the building devoted to the city of Paris where, in addi-
tion to models of the machinery of sanitation, a useful sur-
vey is offered of modern village planning and sanitation.
In the Pavilion of Education are many exhibits that
bear upon social problems. Here one may gain information
about the structure of vocational training in France, seen
in comparison with side exhibits showing provisions in
other countries. This hall also gives some idea of the vari-
ous school systems to be found in France and indicates the
extent to which the development of these systems has been
inspired with the ideal of democracy.
It may be that the foreign social worker will not take
home with him from this exposition many new ideas or
suggestions for new devices. Nevertheless, his visit will
have been fruitful and inspiring, for it is probable that
never has an exposition given so strong and so convincing
an expression to the theme of social work, nor solved so fully
the problem of applying adequate graphic techniques and
artistic standards to the presentation of social ideas.
FOR DOUBLY-HANDICAPPED CHILDREN
Just a hundred years ago, Dr.
Samuel Gridley Howe, whose wife
was Julia Ward Howe, undertook to
teach the use of language to a child who
was deaf and blind, a task which no one
hitherto had accomplished successfully.
Dr. Howe took the child, Laura Dewey
Bridgman, to a school for the blind which
he had established a few years before
— later the Perkins Institution, at
Watertown, Mass. Slowly and pains-
takingly he developed methods which
not only brought success to his efforts
for Laura Bridgman but which were
the beginnings of a center of training
for such doubly handicapped children
and for their teachers. One of the lat-
ter was the late Anne Sullivan Macy,
teacher-companion of Helen Keller.
In celebration of this anniversary,
the Perkins Institution, primarily a
training school for the blind, now
plans to develop a national center
available for training all educable
deaf-blind children. Already the
school has such a department but with
limited facilities. Schooling for the
deaf-blind, during their first years of
instruction, teacher training, field
work and laboratory research are con-
templated, if funds can be raised. Al-
though the 1930 White House Confer-
ence on Child Care and Protection
pointed out the need for more provi-
sion for this peculiarly unfortunate
group of children, there is still no
adequate central institution available
for their care and education.
mSr.
Dr. Howe with Laura Bridgman
OCTOBER 1937
315
MISS BAILEY SAYS:
Brace Up, Theodore
By GERTRUDE SPRINGER
IT was sheer luck that brought Theodore into Miss
Bailey's ken. If the tire had blown out anywhere else
that day she would have missed him entirely. And it
was not until her patently ineffective assistance on the jack
had been declined by her escort and she had wandered up
through the goldenrod in search of shade that she came on
Theodore, a figure of dejection collapsed on the running
board of his tatterdemalion old Ford. Even when she
dropped down in front of him he only lifted lack-luster
eyes for a moment from the contemplation of his feet.
"Warm, isn't it," she remarked brightly.
"Yassum," without moving a muscle.
"But mighty soon" — still brightly — "it'll be winter."
"Yassum. But de welfare lady say I gotta s'pote my
chillun in wintah sam lak in summah."
Following the slow-motion tilt of his head Miss Bailey
saw, back off the road, a little white building with the
sign Welfare Office. Thus did Theodore and presently
brisk, young Miss Larson come into Miss Bailey's life.
At the moment neither one of them was really any of
Miss Bailey's business. She was dated to see a promising
young child welfare center in the county seat, but the
center would be there tomorrow while Theodore was ob-
viously a "must," to be taken now or never.
Theodore, it developed, was not resentful of "de wel-
fare lady's" dictum, he was merely cast into outer darkness
without benefit of thought processes. For a number of
years "de welfare lady" had come along soon after the first
cold snap to see to it that his family got through the win-
ter. Odd jobs, a garden and "jes scratchin' round" got him
through the summer. "An now she say she kain't do no
mo', 'at I gotta save up foh my own sef. How kin I save
up when I gotta pay foh my cyah?"
So there was a car in it. Miss Bailey wasn't surprised.
The farther she got from the big cities the more surely
was there a car.
Softly, fearing to break the thread, she put in, "I suppose
you use the car in your business."
Theodore revived noticeably at this evidence of under-
standing. "Yassum, de cyah am my business. How I gonto
hunt me a job effen I ain't got no cyah? An' effen I don'
pay foh my cyah I won't have no cyah."
Miss Bailey pressed on. "You use it other ways, too."
"Yassum. I carries folks to wuk 'at ain't got no cyah, an
I carries my chillun to pick berries an' do weedin' an
sech, an' I carries my wife's washin's foh her. I'se wukkin'
my cyah all de time. I'se got eight head o' chillun an'
how kin I save up when I gotta pay foh my cyah?"
Miss Bailey had no answer. Thoughtfully she nibbled
a blade of grass while Theodore returned to stricken re-
gard of his deplorable shoes.
Then, because she knew that welfare ladies were rela-
tively new phenomena in this particular region, she tried,
still softly, to go back of the immediate event. "I suppose
there was more work for you some time ago, before the
welfare was here to help." With some effort Theodore re-
called that all but forgotten period.
"Yassum, an' I didn't have so many chillun, an' seems
lak folks was moh biggah h'arted dan dey is now. De
folks I an' my wife wukked foh summahs would do sumpin'
foh us pore folks when it got cole. But now dey say,
'You go to de welfare,' an' de welfare lady she say . . .
an' I say ... an' she say ... an' I gotta pay foh my cyah."
Theodore drifted off into gloom and Miss Bailey crossed
over to the little white building to look up the author of
his despair.
Miss Larson, "de welfare lady," was enormously cheered
to hear that Theodore was taking her seriously. "Really?
Why, that's wonderful."
Theodore, Miss Larson explained, had been growing
"chronicer and chronicer," coming to relief earlier in the
fall and staying with it later in the spring. "In the begin-
ning he came with the first snow but now he doesn't even
wait for a frost. He comes with the goldenrod."
IN an urban community Theodore, with those indispu-
table eight "head o' chillun," might have gotten away
with it, but not here where every member of the welfare
board knew the strength of his passive resistance to work.
You might say that Theodore had never worked since the
older children had come to the age of "weedin' an' sech."
"The Welfare" had made life easier for the neighbors by
taking over from them the casually borne burden of winter
support of the brood and certainly easier for Theodore since
he only had to go to one door for provender instead, as for-
merly, to half a dozen back doors. But now, with more
chillun at weedin' age, with Mrs. Theodore's washin's prac-
tically back at pre-depression level, the family, by all local
standards, should be on its feet.
And what happened?
Theodore rolled home one fine day in a "cyah" to the
wild joy of the children and the supreme pride of his wife.
To be sure the first payment had been minute, but it was a
"cyah," rich reward for the most prodigious feats of weedin'
and washin'. The welfare board, said Miss Larson, was
not amused. If Theodore's family could weed and wash
him into a car it could weed and wash itself off relief.
Theodore could expect nothing, it decided, come golden-
rod, frost or snow, and Miss Larson must so inform him.
Miss Larson went on with the story: "Theodore wasn't
home when I called. His wife, up to her elbows in soap-
suds, said he was working the car. He really does pick up
dimes and quarters taking people around — probably enough
for his gasoline. I told her we couldn't do much of any-
thing for them this winter, and that we were warning them
now while there was still time to do something about it
themselves, to plant late beans for example, and to dry ap-
ples and especially to save up money from her summer earn-
ings. She agreed to everything, but advised me not to worry
because, 'Now we got a cyah I spec' we'll be all right.'
"A week later Theodore turned up. His wife had lost
a couple of washings and his oldest boy his job and it seemed
like he'd have to have his relief right away. There wasn't
much use reading the riot act to him, he'd just Yassum me
and we'd get no forrader. But I did make it clear that with
work still to be done in the fields and with time to plant
a late garden he'd get no relief from this office. That was
'two weeks ago. Every day since he's parked out under that
316
THE SURVEY
tree, just sitting. No, I wouldn't call it picketing, that's too
vigorous a word to attach to any action of Theodore's.
"Of course it wasn't Theodore alone who caused the
board to put its back up. It was a lot of him who, we dis-
covered by careful check, were rolling high and handsome
in the summers, when work around here is plentiful, and
dropping back into the lap of relief at the first slackening
in the autumn. It had been going on ever since the FERA
days when these people had their first experience with relief
other than neighbors' handouts and occasional grudging
grocery orders from the county commissioners. Year by year
their time on relief had lengthened, although work oppor-
tunities had increased. We found that some of them this
summer were making practically double their relief budgets.
But were they saving up for winter, were they canning
garden stuff and fattening a pig? Oh, no. They were buy-
ing 'cyahs,' making first payments on plush parlor suites and
radios, on pianos and sets of books. And we know perfectly
well that within a week after work dropped off they'd be
here without a nickel to show for their summer's work."
"Except the things they'd probably dreamed of all their
lives," put in Miss Bailey, remembering a suppressed yearn-
ing or two of her own.
"Oh, don't worry about that," Miss Larson countered.
"They've had 'em before and the installment houses have
taken 'em back.
"Anyway the board decided we had to do something.
Our prospect for relief funds this winter is shaky. It was
only kindness to warn these people that in all probability
there just wasn't going to be any relief.
"TTTE weren't as hard-boiled about it as I probably
W sound. First of all we looked at the cases closed in
the early spring by reason of employment and found some
fifty-odd that had been closed for the same reason in preced-
ing springs and as regularly reopened in succeeding autumns.
For about half of them the employment always had been set
down as permanent — optimists that we are — the rest as sea-
sonal. We then went out to take a look at the family pros-
pect for the winter; specifically, how many were working
and at what and for whom; the total cash income for a
typical week; other resources such as garden, poultry, live
stock, and so on; special expenditures such as payments on
debts, on a car or new furniture ; and finally how the family
itself was thinking and planning, if at all, against the win-
ter. The interviews were friendly, discussing the outlook
for the family and the financial state of the relief office."
"And what you got was Theodore," commented Miss
Bailey sorrowfully.
"Oh sure, there are always Theodores," answered Miss
Larson, her cheerfulness unabated, "but along with him
we got a lot of understanding that will help us in planning
our own winter budget and in giving certain of the families
the little pushes and shoves that they seem to need to keep
them going. In fact, if you don't mind a two-dollar word
for a simple little undertaking, the whole thing has been
definitely educational, for them and for us."
"Just what did you turn up besides Theodore?"
"Well we turned up-Marm White and her sockful of
dimes and quarters under a board in the floor, and the Del-
phy Jones' big garden, most of which is being dried and
canned — but suppose I give it to you in figures."
Miss Larson took a plump folder from her desk and ran
her finger down a neat summary sheet. "Of the fifty-eight
families observed twenty-seven fondly believed their work
to be permanent, thirty-one seasonal or casual. All of them
were making more than their budgets. When it came to
planning there was little difference between the permanents
and the seasonals; in both groups some did and some didn't
look ahead, according to the kind of people they were.
course you must remember that they were all sub-
marginal, that at best they hardly could be expected
to make it through the winter without help, and that they
had a long habit of asking and getting, casual in the old
days, regular during the past few years. The best we could
do was to promote and encourage planning and to make
it plain that this office is a weak leaning post.
"Now what did we find in terms of planning. Of the
fifty-eight, twenty-seven were making an honest effort,
doing the best they could within the possibilities; seven-
teen were making stabs at it, meaning well but not know-
ing how; fourteen were doing absolutely nothing, living
each day as it came and, like Mrs. Theodore, 'specting that
everything would be all right. For the twenty-seven there
is little we can do now except to cheer them along. But
this check-up puts us in a good position to estimate their
situation when and if they have to have help.
"Our chief effort now is with the second group, the
seventeen, encouraging them, suggesting new ways to hus-
band and increase resources and generally doing as much
of an educational job as we can. I truly believe that if we
had the time and staff to teach these people how to manage
what they have they wouldn't need to turn to relief. The
poor things simply don't know how. As it is they're pretty
sure to be back on our doorstep when snow flies, but we
and they are doing something at least to postpone that day."
"And what about the others, including Theodore?"
"There, of course, we're stumped. We're keeping the
heat on him, cajoling and warning and acting very, very
stern, but in the end those eight 'head of chillun' will get
us down. We can't let them suffer, and I suspect that The-
odore knows that as well as we do.
"But do you know," Miss Larson brightened visibly,
"I'm not hopeless, in theory anyway, about the Theodores.
If we had money enough to assign a bang-up worker to our
Theodores, a worker so good that they could understand
her, who could meet them where they are and go along with
them in learning, I'm not so sure we couldn't get the The-
odores, or at least the next generation of them, on their
feet. It would be a long hard job but I believe it's the only
way we'll ever get them off relief. Wouldn't you think we'd
be bright enough to try it, instead of fiddling around ?
"Well, we can't tell yet what our summer visitation has
accomplished but I'll bet you a lunch that we will be able
to show a saving in dollars and cents, to say nothing of a
more up-by-the-bootstraps attitude in the people themselves.
And if we can show either or both of these, then next sum-
mer we'll really go to it."
As Miss Bailey picked her way through the dusty golden-
rod back to her long-suffering escort, Theodore opened
sleep-logged eyes to watch her pass.
"Well, brace up, Theodore. I hope you get along all
right this winter," she called to him.
"Yassum. Leastways I got my cyah," said Theodore.
This is the seventh of the new series of articles, "Miss Bailey
Says . . .," in which that veteran of the relief organization
sums up her observations of social services over the coun-
try and her discussions with workers close in to the job.
OCTOBER 1937
317
The Common Welfare
Fame
story comes out of California relayed from St.
Paul by way of Chicago, with no one knows how
much embroidery en route. Anyway, it seems that in a
written test for social workers, given somewhere in Cali-
fornia, was the question, "Who is the author of the articles,
Miss Bailey Says . . .?" and one little dear, bless her heart,
answered confidently, "Harry Hopkins."
Our Common Wealth
CONSUMERS' interests are "superior to monopolistic,
industrial and financial claims or national aggrandize-
ment." Concern for workers and consumers is "the final
test of the effectiveness of the utilization of natural re-
sources." Exchange of raw materials is the rational method
of their distribution "rather than military aggression."
These conclusions emerged from the papers and discussions
of the study conference of the International Industrial
Relations Institute on the world's natural resources and
standards of living held at The Hague in early September.
The participants represented management, labor, the social
sciences and public administration in Austria, Great Bri-
tain, Holland, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland and the
United States.
The group recognized that even its own membership
could not agree on the thorny subject of reorganizing the
economic system. But accepting the general objective of
planned utilization of natural resources for raising stand-
ards of living, the conference focused its discussions on
three "necessary first steps." First, the establishment of
labor standards in areas of production of raw materials.
Second, a world clearing house for the human sciences, as
originally put forward by the IRI in 1931, and more re-
cently advocated by the King of the Belgians. Third, "com-
prehensive workers' organizations," including farmers, in-
dustrial, intellectual and professional workers.
Fortune's Unemployment Survey
E reliefers bums? No. Have they had much edu-
cation? No. Did industry fire them because they
could not do their jobs? No. Do they ask too much help?
No. Has industry taken many of them back since 1935?
Yes, almost half. Is there a shortage of skilled labor? Yes.
Is there an abundance of unskilled labor available to in-
dustry that is not being 'bid away' by WPA? Yes. Are
the local communities doing as good a job of giving direct
relief to the unemployables as the federal government did
two years ago? No."
Thus Fortune, the de luxe magazine for, by and about
business, summarizes the unemployment relief situation in
a notable article in October. The most expensive single
manuscript ever assembled by its editors, it challenges wish-
ful or hazy judgments on the social burden of unemploy-
ment despite recovery. The above catechism is not a quo-
tation of opinion, but the product of research — a sample
following the technique of the regular Fortune Quarterly
Survey in three boom communities, two chronically de-
pressed regions, and six communities between "bounding
prosperity and continued economic gloom." Social workers
will recognize the authenticity of the samples as well as
their projection into a general picture of over five million
unemployed and their fifteen million dependents. The most
dramatic study thus far made by any lay group it is also
the most challenging in its candor.
At the risk of being accused of beating the tom-tom for
Harry Hopkins, the editors say of WPA: "One result of
the research will perhaps startle you: this impartial and
wholly unbiased survey gave strongest support to the feel-
ing that the machinery (as opposed to the laborer cared
for) of the damned and despised WPA functions with an
efficiency of which any industrialist would be proud." This
Fortune article, complete with statistical appendices, should
be required reading for those business men who are some-
times vaguely inclined to discount similar material in The
Survey and Survey Graphic as perhaps a little remote from
the practical, workaday world of business and budgets. For,
as Fortune advertises itself: Fortune means Business.
"E. A."
DEATH came to Edward A. Filene in mid-September
at the American Hospital, Paris. Thus it put a stop
to a world traveler with honors and orders from half a
dozen countries; but not to the ideas that he carrried in his
kit. For example, early and undismayed, he was an exponent
of economic sanctions as alternative to war. Founder of the
International Management Institute at Geneva and co-
founder of the International Chamber of Commerce, he
was on one of his inveterate missions for rapprochement
and understanding among men and nations. Two years
ago, in Moscow, he had worsted the same private enemy —
pneumonia — that stood in his way. Now at seventy-seven it
caught him in his stride; but not before, out of his heart
and insight, he had called on the United States, Great
Britain and France to join forces with China and Russia
to preserve world peace in the present crisis.
A fuller measure of the man comes closer home. Small
merchant turned magnificent and millionaire, he lived out
his belief that he and his kind can give back their best to
society, neither by withdrawal or philanthropy, but by
staying in business and demonstrating how human gains
can be made in the primary processes of work and trade.
Today, spread across the country, largely through his in-
dividual support and conviction, are 6300 credit unions,
with assets of $75 million, giving strength to the elbow of
everyday people as buyers — just such people as he originally
met across the counter. He had them in mind when he
helped to recondition the Boston Chamber of Commerce
and institute the national and international chambers. At
the time of his death his most considerable creation, The
Twentieth Century Fund, was engaged in an inquiry into
distribution, designed to get to the heart of consumer prob-
lems. For himself, he projected a central buying and ser-
vice organization for a chain of cooperative department
stores as a fresh alternative to the existing profit system.
He was to see some of his contrivances, such as the Boston
318
THE SURVEY
City Club or the U. S. Chamber of Commerce fall short
of his hopes for them; or perhaps it was that he himself
forged ahead. At least — and this was another insurgent
characteristic of the man — he simply clambered over fail-
ures; they never stopped him when it came to new ideas
or new improvisations charged with the future.
Interstate Common Sense
THE fruit of long negotiations was plucked last month
in Kansas City when, at the third annual meeting of
the Interstate Commission on Crime, a compact was con-
summated by which twenty-nine states, through their gov-
ernors, agree to supervise the parolees and probationers of
the others. The compact permits any person on parole or
probation in one state to reside in any other contracting
state where he or his family can show residence and where
he can obtain employment provided that the state in ques-
tion agrees to receive him. Men so transferred will be su-
pervised on the same basis as those whose cases originated
in the receiving state. Provision is made for the return
without extradition proceedings of men who violate their
parole or probation and of their transportation without in-
terference through any of the contracting states. Rules for
the enforcement of the compact are now being formulated.
This new compact is one of several promoted by the In-
terstate Commission in its effort to develop intergovern-
mental cooperation in curbing crime. While designed pri-
marily to strengthen the hands of law enforcing agencies
it is not unmindful of the common sense fact that restric-
tions, often meaningless, which separate the paroled man
from his family or from a job, may endanger the success
of the whole parole procedure.
The compact puts a new responsibility on the parole
agencies of the contracting states. Few if any of them ever
have had funds or personnel adequate to a real job within
their own borders. The obligation they now have assumed
may be the challenge which will lift weak standards of pa-
role supervision to the level of the best. No state will do
less for its own than it is called upon to do for its neighbors.
Up to the Cities
IMAGINE every householder in a city the size of
Schenectady, N.Y., with its almost 100,000 population,
hunting for a new home, for proper living quarters within
his income. That, by comparison, is what is happening in
New York City where 19,000 families have applied for the
1622 family units in Williamsburg Houses, largest of the
fifty-odd PWA Housing Division projects over the coun-
try. Some 10,000 of the applicants were found eligible as
to income. Further investigation led to the selection of 700
families as first tenants. On October 1 forty-five of them
moved in, to be joined by some 1500 others before the end
of the year.
With the passage of the National Housing Act [see The
Survey, September 1937, page 288] comes a new era in
public housing and a new set of rules. But the fact that the
demand for quarters in the emergency program projects
so outruns the supply is significant. Applicants for Wil-
liamsburg alone would have filled all the PWA buildings.
These PWA projects offer food for thought, as was
emphasized at the recent conference of some forty experts
called by Secretary Ickes to disuss the administration of the
new law. The experience of the past four years must be
carefully studied and set down in black and white, espe-
cially since the great problem is to get rents down low
enough to meet both the need of the people and the terms
of the act.
A problem even more difficult, many speakers at the con-
ference maintained, is to educate John Citizen as to the
country's housing need. As yet only thirty states have
passed enabling legislation ; only fifty cities have set up
housing authorities through which the federal law can
function. While no one state can receive more than one
tenth of the $500 million of federal funds provided, more
authorities equipped to meet the terms of the act must be
established if even this sum is to be turned into houses.
Half a billion dollars is a small sum in relation to the
national need for housing, but unless it is used promptly
Congress is not likely to recognize that fact. Before cities
can use federal funds to construct housing for their people
they must set up the requisite housing authority.
Wasted Treasure
THAT this country is wasting its most precious natural
resource, its gifted children, was the warning of Prof.
Harvey W. Zorbaugh, speaking last month before the Vas-
sar Euthenics Institute. Professor Zorbaugh, director of the
Clinic for the Social Adjustment of the Gifted at New
York University, estimates that there is in the United States
a relatively small group of children who have "an I.Q. of
180 or above," from whom, he holds, must come the social
and technological leadership of their generation. More, that
only one such child is to be found in each 14,000 children —
perhaps 164 in New York State's school population of
2,296,868; 1800 to 2000 among the 26,434,193 school chil-
dren of the nation. Yet, Professor Zorbaugh points out,
American school systems have made no effort to identify
these potential geniuses, nor to give them "adequate educa-
tional opportunity." With millions of dollars lavished on
the hopelessly handicapped — the dull, feeble-minded and
imbecile — he finds our national neglect of the gifted "a
major indictment of the educational system." He holds that:
"Experience shows that unless such gifted children are early
identified and given suitable educational experience, many of
them as adults are wholly unproductive from the social point
of view, and many others are vastly less productive than
they might be."
And So On . . .
IF men of forty, as certain industrialists hold, are begin-
ning to lose their "steam" how do they account for
what the American Legion conventioneers, admittedly forty-
ish, did to New York for three unforgettable September
days? ... At a recent convention the Grand Lodge of New
Jersey IOOF voted to continue the operation of its thirty-
year-old orphanage even though only six children were
living at the time in the building designed for sixty. ... A
sit-in demonstration of unemployed musicians in a New
York movie theatre stuck it out through six showings of
the feature picture but gave it up when the sound machinery
started in for the seventh time on the theme song, Let's
Call the Whole Thing Off For some 8500 social agen-
cies in nearly four hundred cities, mid-October marks the
opening of the intensive 1937-8 mobilization for funds, led
nationally by Community Chests and Councils, Inc. Charles
P. Taft, II, of Cincinnati heads a committee to enlist the
help of radio hook-ups, newsreels, publications, citizen
groups everywhere and — far from least — Shirley Temple.
OCTOBER 1937
319
The Social Front
Public Assistance
T OOKING toward the coming union
of its emergency relief bureau and
its public welfare department, New York
City is preparing to call all public assist-
ance by its proper name, be it home re-
lief, old age assistance, veteran relief,
aid to dependent children or whatever,
and to unify administration accordingly.
A demonstration unit has been established
on Staten Island where all forms of pub-
lic assistance which have been adminis-
tered by the Department of Welfare, and
all relief activities formerly handled by
the ERB are now the business of a single
welfare center with a single staff. (An ex-
ception is mother's aid which comes un-
der the Board of Child Welfare.) A
district which had a relatively small num-
ber of relief cases was chosen as a lab-
oratory to work out methods and pro-
cedures. It is expected that the experience
will demonstrate the best ways of de-
centralizing administration geographic-
ally, through welfare centers in various
boroughs, while at the same time central-
izing responsibility for types of assistance
and coordinating services. The new pro-
cedure, made possible under a new state
law, will allow any one investigator to
handle all types of cases within the geo-
graphical area to which he is assigned.
"The family is the center of the prob-
lem," William Hodson, city commis-
sioner of public welfare, and Edmond B.
Butler, secretary of the ERB board, spon-
sors of the plan, point out. "One inves-
tigator should deal with that family
whether the difficulty is unemployment,
old age, blindness, or any combination of
handicaps. This plan will provide more
prompt, more convenient and adequate
service to the people who must have help
and are entitled to receive it."
It is expected that the new centers
will be established as the coming consoli-
dation is effected and as methods are
evolved at the demonstration center. The
special services now available through
ERB — medical and nursing facilities,
special diets and clothing allowances —
eventually will be available as required
by all receiving assistance through the
welfare center. Special training classes
and a manual of procedure to familiarize
staff members with their new duties are
planned.
Senate Study — Alan Johnstone, one-
time state director of emergency relief in
South Carolina and former field repre-
sentative for FERA and later for WPA,
is counsel to a special Senate committee
to investigate unemployment and relief.
320
The committee was appointed during the
efforts of Congress to slash the 1937 re-
lief appropriation by one third. [See The
Survey, July 15, page 225.] Where reso-
lutions and bills for a broad study of un-
employment and relief failed, this Senate-
appointed committee gives promise of one
effort to gather fairly extended informa-
tion on the subject. Hearings probably
will start in November, calling in em-
ployers, officials and others concerned in
an attempt to "evaluate" the work of ex-
isting relief agencies — WPA, PWA, CCC
and the late Resettlement Administra-
tion. The committee's aim is to recom-
mend to the Senate a permanent relief
policy when it makes its report in March,
1938. Points which Mr. Johnstone is ex-
pected to recommend for study will in-
clude: extent of unemployment (as re-
vealed by the coming registration) ; num-
bers of persons receiving benefits of all
kinds, federal or state, for unemploy-
ment, old age or physical incapacity;
need for vocational "retraining"; econom-
ic value of work projects; rural relief
problems; financial ability of states and
cities to share relief burdens.
CGG — By new legislation relating to
CCC which Congress passed last June,
enrollees (except veterans) who on Sep-
tember 30 had served more than eighteen
months or who had passed their twenty-
fourth birthdays were forced to return to
their homes to seek outside employment.
If they are generally unsuccessful still
further demands on local relief will re-
sult, as CCC members whose families are
on relief must send home $22 monthly,
which sum is deducted from the fam-
ily relief allowance. Also dropped from
CCC on September 30 were the group
who were allowed to enroll because they
possessed some special skill but were tech-
nically not eligible for CCC.
By a last minute ruling, large groups
were made eligible for re-enrollment for
an additional six-month period.
Perennial Problem — In sharp con-
trast to the hopeful expressions current
from WPA headquarters, local relief ad-
ministrations already are beginning to
find themselves short of funds or pros-
pects of funds to . complete the year.
Chicago, in fact all of Illinois, again is
up against a stiff problem of financing;
so stiff in fact that Relief Commissioner
Lyons was moved to conclude that "em-
ployment seems to be the only answer
inasmuch as the various governmental
units of the state, including the city of
Chicago, have done everything they can
do within the law toward meeting the
problem locally." A steadily rising case
load through the state appeared in Aug-
ust— unexpectedly early — and caused
Governor Homer hastily to convene a
group of leading citizens and officials.
They, too, concluded that state and city
had gone the limit of taxing ability and
that "the crisis could be met only if com-
merce and industry would take up the
slack represented by employables still on
the dole."
In New Jersey deficits in state funds
loomed so large that a special session of
the legislature is expected, on call of
Governor Hoffman, in October. The defi-
cit in the 1937 relief bill estimated by
the governor at $3 million to $4 million
was put by Workers' Alliance spokes-
men at a probable $7 million. Both agreed
that in any case the sum lacking could
not be met by the resources of municipali-
ties. ... A recent report on relief in
New Jersey shows average relief per case
to have been $22.58 in June 1937, as
compared to $19.20 in June 1936. The
significance of these figures, a correspon-
dent points out, is that the State Financial
Assistance Commission (which in New
Jersey supplies supplementary funds
though relief administration is entirely
local) has persuaded local overseers to in-
clude certain extra items, such as medical
care and milk. ... A ruling by the
attorney general of New Jersey advised
the SFAC that, although the act of 1936
creating the commission specifically au-
thorized cash assistance, paid monthly,
the commission is without authority to
withhold funds from certain localities
which require relief clients to work for
food orders.
Relief and Pensions — General relief
funds in Colorado are being seriously
pinched by the depletion of state welfare
funds from liberalized old age pension
provisions now operative in the state.
Where formerly more than 37 percent
of the state welfare funds were available
for state aid to relief of unemployed and
destitute, now 85 percent of the funds
go for old age allowances. In six months
of financing relief in Denver by special
appropriations, "hand to mouth," the
needy other than old age assistance clients
received: from January through May, 60
percent of their minimum budgets; in
June, 42 percent; and by mid-July only
38 percent.
Supplementation — In Illinois as else-
where big families seem to be at the
root of the necessity for supplementing
insufficient WPA wages with direct re-
lief. The July report of the ERC, the
last available, shows an average of 6.3
persons in the 7145 cases receiving such
THE SURVEY
aid. In Cook County, which had 3959
of the cases, the average supplementation
was $17.98; in the down-state counties
$13.68. The entire expenditure of all local
public relief agencies for this item came
to $114,790 in July of which $71,190 was
in Cook County.
WPA
T OOKING ahead at the fourth winter
"^ of WPA, Corrington Gill, assistant
administrator, views as much of the pros-
pect as can now be seen with no great
alarm. In a recent address he told the
New England Council of Mayors that
the present employment total of approxi-
mately a million and a half WPA work-
ers is expected, on the basis of usual
seasonal increases, to rise to a peak of
about 1,800,000 next February and
March. WPA budgeting now is done on
that expectation. The limitation fixed by
Congress in setting the 1937-38 relief
appropriation at $1,500,000 — and that
not all for the uses of WPA — is recog-
nized as regrettable but arbitrary; and
"makes it impossible for us to do what
we would like to do — to give work to
at least one employable in each destitute
family." The federal policy for 1937-38
necessarily has been changed from last
year's "care of the needy at whatever
expenditure was necessary," to the cur-
rent fiscal year's "necessity of caring for
only as many as can be included in the
limited money available for the purpose."
As to the consequences, according to a
Washington correspondent of the New
York Times, WPA officials now recog-
nize that an added burden of relief has
been thrown on states and localities
through recent curtailments of WPA;
that probably 25 percent of those who
have been dropped from federal relief
rolls are not now getting relief from
any official source; and believe that "a
vast majority of those who have ceased
to be WPA wage earners are now pri-
vate wage earners."
Problems, 1937 Model — An impor-
tant provision of the 1937 relief appro-
priations act specifically provides that no
"relief" person employed on a work pro-
ject may be retained on that job if he
refuses an offer of private employment at
work he is capable of doing, if the private
employer offers equivalent wages and
reasonable working conditions. It pro-
vides further that if he leaves WPA and
then, through no fault of his own, loses
his private job and is again in need of
relief, he shall be immediately reinstated
under WPA. These provisions have been
given point in recent weeks by labor
shortages in cotton and tobacco growing
sections. In Texas, Georgia, Tennessee,
the demand for workers to harvest valu-
able crops resulted in attempts to force
those on local relief and on WPA pro-
jects to take the jobs offered or be
dropped from the rolls. Some refused,
basing their objections on "fitness" for
the jobs or on the size of the prevailing
local wage. A dollar a day for backbreak-
ing labor in cotton fields was reported to
be "prevailing" in parts of Texas. WPA
and relief administrations generally took
the stand that, according to regulations,
jobs must be accepted or else WPA or
relief status would be lost. Some excep-
tions were allowed for "fitness."
In a tight spot for relief financing, city
officials of Toledo, Ohio, are reported to
have worked out a plan for putting to
work on city parks and boulevards all
employables on local relief rolls. Under
this plan those who refuse, automatically
are dropped. Employment is part time,
at prevailing rates.
Current headaches in many localities
are resulting from the further restric-
tions against aliens which were tied to
the 1937 relief appropriations act. The
new provisions give preference in WPA
employment first to full-fledged Ameri-
can citizens and next to aliens who had
taken out their first papers before pas-
sage of the 1937 act. While needy aliens
are not actually barred, as a result of the
practically universal inadequacy of WPA
jobs to the need, those last in line get
left. Thousands of aliens are being
thrown on local resources or upon their
own. The provision which previously
barred aliens known to be illegally in
this country has been tightened up to
bar also those who have not declared
their intention of becoming citizens.
Employability — Press and public com-
ment increasingly recognizes the need for
accurate information on the real nature
of unemployment in the planning of pub-
lic works, of relief and of industry. But
at the same time widespread disbelief
is evidenced that anything of much value.
will be forthcoming from the scheduled
registration of unemployed.
The U. S. Chamber of Commerce,
through a recent article in The Nation's
Business, released a study from which
it was concluded that at least half of an
estimated five millions now unemployed
are unemployable; hence that neither in-
dustry nor government public works pro-
grams ever can be expected to take up
the lag. Admitting that the results of this
rather limited study are inconclusive, a
spokesman for the chamber offers co-
operation in the coming census of un-
employment and emphasizes the need for
counting the employables among the un-
employed in order to tackle the problem
intelligently.
In a recent pamphlet, The Needed Link
Between Unemployment Insurance and
Relief [see The Survey, September 15,
page 291], William Haber of the Uni-
versity of Michigan said that "while
it may be hazardous to say that approxi-
mately 50 percent of the persons on WPA
are not likely to find a job in private in-
dustry at any time, I make that state-
ment, nevertheless, on the basis of the
age and skill composition of the WPA
in the State of Michigan and in several
other industrial states."
Compensation
VIT'HEN 168 Iowa employers of eight
workers each recently volunteered
to accept the provisions of the state un-
employment compensation act, protection
was extended to more than eight hundred
individuals. "Many of the employers have
headquarters outside the State of Iowa,"
states Walter F. Scholes, of the State
Unemployment Compensation Commis-
Administration — The Massachusetts
Unemployment Commission has ruled
that employers will no longer be required
to keep on payroll records for unemploy-
ment compensation purposes the number
of hours worked by each individual em-
ploye. . . . Eighty positions in Georgia's
State Bureau of Unemployment Com-
pensation have been placed under civil
service regulations. Governor Rivers an-
nounces that an agreement "to put all
personnel and employes under the merit
system has been signed by Judge T. F.
Whitaker, commissioner of labor; L. P.
James, executive director of the bureau;
and the federal Social Security Board."
. . . The North Carolina Compensation
Commission has ruled that newspaper
carrier boys are not employes of the pub-
lishers and that the publishers are not
liable for taxes on the earnings of these
"little merchants." ... A representative
of the U. S. Department of Labor is as-
sisting the Alaska Unemployment Com-
pensation Commission in opening employ-
ment offices, as provided for under the
new law.
In the Courts — A test of the social
security act, to determine whether firms
undergoing reorganization must pay social
security taxes has been taken under ad-
visement in federal bankruptcy court by
Arthur Black, referee. The states of
Massachusetts and New Hampshire and
the collector of internal revenue seek
$4927 in taxes from the defunct Amos-
keag Manufacturing Company. It is
contended that the employes of the com-
pany are still working, despite reorgani-
zation, "and that the law was evolved
for the benefit of employes." . . . The
first test of the South Carolina unem-
ployment compensation law is a suit for a
permanent injunction, instituted by two
employers to restrain the State Unem-
ployment Commission from collecting
contributions for unemployment compen-
sation from the plaintiffs, S. B. McMas-
ter, Inc., and the partnership of A. B.
McMaster and C. J. Gate, Jr. ...
OCTOBER 1937
321
Chancellor James B. Newman has de-
nied the application of the Southern Pho-
to Blue Print Co. and Taywal, Ltd., both
of Chattanooga, for a restraining order
to enjoin the State of Tennessee from
collecting levies under the unemployment
compensation act.
Coordination — With unemployment
compensation becoming payable in twenty-
two states after January 1, and with the
rest of the states soon following, the
Social Security Board and the state un-
employment compensation agencies are
cooperating in setting up plans and pro-
cedures. The board has announced grants
totaling more than $1,200,000 to thirteen
states for financing expansion of their
employment services. Similar grants to
other states will soon be made. In con-
nection with unemployment compensation
legislation and administration, the board,
through its Bureau of Unemployment
Compensation, and the Department of
Labor, through the U. S. Employment
Service, have so integrated their func-
tions that they act as a single agency.
Study and Report — Social security
will be included among the governmen-
tal problems studied by members of the
Harvard faculty during the current aca-
demic year, under grants totaling $41,257
awarded by the Committee on Research
in the Social Sciences at Harvard.
Schools and Education
AMERICAN Education Week, 1937,
** will tie observed November 7 to
13. The observance is sponsored jointly
by the National Education Association,
the U.S. Office of Education and the
American Legion. Last year nearly seven
million parents and citizens visited the
public schools on this occasion. The gen-
eral theme this year is Education and
Our National Life. Posters, leaflets, and
program material may be secured
through the National Education Associ-
ation, 1201 Sixteenth Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C.
Work Camps — More than two hun-
dred students from eastern colleges spent
their vacations in a combination of work
and social discussion in the volunteer
work camps directed by the American
Friends Service Committee, 20 South
Twelfth Street, Philadelphia. The camps
"aim to develop a non-violent technique
of social change and to serve as sub-
stitutes for military training." [See Pick
and Shovel Holiday by John F. Reich,
Survey Graphic for April 1937, page
232.] In Philadelphia, for example, the
students made a community survey of
an area where Negroes are crowding out
Italians and Hungarians; they also
served as recreation directors, built a
children's wading pool, and remodeled
the interior of a settlement building. At
the Delta Cooperative Farm, Hillhouse,
Miss., they studied the sharecropper
problem, conducted a school, built a guest
house, a playground, and a bridge across
a bayou. Other camps were located in the
Fayette County coal fields of Pennsyl-
vania, in the Tennessee Valley, and at
the Tunesassa Indian School, Quaker
Bridge, N. Y.
Emergency Teaching— For 300,000
elementary school pupils kept out of
school by the outbreak of infantile paraly-
sis in Chicago, class work was carried
forward by radio. Beginning with setting
up exercises at 7:15 a.m., six radio sta-
tions took turns in broadcasting instruc-
tions until 7 p.m. Fourteen principals
cooperated in formulating the course of
study for pupils from the third through
the eighth grade. Science, mathematics,
English, geography and history were in-
cluded in the radio curriculum. Daily
papers cooperated in publishing material
to guide students in their radio classes.
Because of lack of radio time, highschool
subjects could not be covered and high-
school students were advised by radio to
review their last semester notebooks.
Veblen College — Plans are announced
by a group headed by Prof. Joseph K.
Hart of Teachers College , Columbia
University, for "a cooperative school to
deal with problems of social change."
The goal is a new, independent college
"which would make social reconstruction
its chief problem and its chief purpose."
The new institution already has a hun-
dred acres near Hightstown, N.J., as a
site, and is embarking on an endowment
campaign. (Ralph H. Read, executive sec-
retary, 1107 Broadway, New York City.)
Youth Aid — Federal assistance to
needy school and college students through
NYA, will be curtailed by about one
third this year, a cut of nearly $3 mil-
lion. Allotments to the states under the
student aid program will not exceed $20
million for the current academic year,
and student employment quotas will not
go above 220,000. Last year more than
$28 million was spent on the program,
with enrollments totaling 310,000. Gradu-
ate aid as a special subdivision of the
program has been eliminated. A special
fund of $70,000 has been set aside again
this year for the assistance of Negro
graduate students in states which do
not offer advanced courses for Negroes.
There is also a special allotment of
$311,550 for needy highschool students
in ten midwestern drought states, and a
similar provision for college students will
be made.
Pennsylvania's New Law — A yearly
enumeration of all children six to eight-
een years of age is required under Penn-
sylvania's new school laws, and the state
superintendent of public instruction is
authorized, at his discretion, to require
a state census of all minors. At the same
time the age for compulsory school at-
tendance is raised to eighteen years, with
those who complete a four-year high-
school course before eighteen, and certain
others exempted. Other significant pro-
visions require that all public school
buildings hereafter built or rebuilt shall
provide a health room for physical ex-
amination, and that buildings must con-
form to better standards of light area,
floor space and cubical size. Provision is
also made for the identification and spe-
cial education of mentally retarded chil-
dren and for the care and treatment of
other handicapped children.
Record and Report — A new edition
of An Introduction to Progressive Edu-
cation, by Samuel Engle Burr, superin-
tendent of schools, New Castle, Del., has
been prepared by the author, with new
material on the "activity program" and
a bibliography. (C. A. Gregory Co., 345
Calhoun Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. Price
50 cents) . . . Four Years of Network
Broadcasting is the title of a report on
the "You and Your Government" radio
program, by the Committee on Civic
Education by Radio and the American
Political Science Association. (University
of Chicago Press, Chicago. Price 25
cents) . . . To encourage the study of
American history, Harvard University
has issued a stimulating study program
and reading list compiled by members of
the faculty for Harvard students and for
the public. No char2e.
jobs and Workers
CUGAR beet and sugar cane growers
have been warned by the Farm Ad-
ministration that they must comply with
the child labor provisions of the new
Sugar Act to qualify for benefit pay-
ments under the act. The measure, signed
by the President September 1, provides
that to be eligible for payments, growers
cannot employ children under fourteen
years of age in the production, cultiva-
tion or harvest of beets or cane. Children
between fourteen and sixteen cannot be
employed more than eight hours a day
unless they are members of the imme-
diate family of a person who owns at
least 40 percent of the crop at the time
the work is performed.
Count of the Jobless — Plans for the
immediate registration of the unemployed
and the partially unemployed have been
approved by President Roosevelt. John D.
Biggers, head of the Libbey-Owens-Ford
Glass Company of Toledo, is directing
the undertaking, for which the President
has allotted $5 million from relief funds.
Instead of a census, the plan is for a vol-
untary enrollment through the Post Of-
fice Department. Mr. Biggers announces
that very simple blanks will be distribu-
ted to 31 million homes. Plans are being
322
THE SURVEY
made to help registrants, especially for-
eign language groups and illiterates.
While the law sets April 1 as the date
by which the count must be completed,
Mr. Biggers hopes to finish the job be-
fore December 1, because of the holiday
load on the Post Office and the post-
holiday slump in employment. The defin-
itions of "unemployed" and "partially
unemployed" which will be used have not
been announced.
Minimum Wage - - Clothing, food,
shoes, fuel, light, rent, medical and dental
care, and a few beauty and recreation
items are being priced in fifteen repre-
sentative New York cities by trained in-
vestigators, as a step toward determin-
ing the cost of living which the legislature
set as one of the measures to be used in
determining minimum wage standards for
women and minors. The other two fac-
tors to be considered under the new law
are: fair value of services rendered by
wage earners, and wages paid for com-
parable work by other employers in the
state. ... A series of new orders has
been issued by the Str.te Welfare Com-
mission of Oregon for many of the state's
industries. In most orders, the important
change is a cut in hours of work for wom-
en from nine a day and forty-eight a week
to eight a day and forty-four a week, with
an increase from 27^2 to 30 cents an hour
for experienced workers. ... In Okla-
homa, where the minimum wage law ap-
plies to both men and women, hearings
have been held in the laundry and dry
cleaning, automobile repair and filling
station, wholesale and retail mercantile
and drug manufacturing industries.
Union Clinic — The United Auto
Workers announce the opening of a Med-
ical Institute to combat industrial dis-
ease in the automobile industry. It will be
in charge of Dr. Frederick C. Lendrum,
formerly of the Mayo Clinic in Roches-
ter, Minn., under the advisory director-
ship of Dr. Emery Hayhurst, consultant
of the Ohio State Board of Health. The
first problems to be studied by the in-
stitute will be lead and chromium poison-
ing, silicosis, industrial skin diseases, fa-
tigue and speed-up neuroses. The union
has made an initial appropriation of
$10,000 to launch the undertaking.
Record and Report — The American
Federation of Labor (AF of L Build-
ing, Washington, D.C.) offers an admir-
able monthly Survey of Business, giving
"labor's viewpoint on the business situ-
ation, with facts and figures on labor's
buying power, wages, hours, cost of liv-
ing, and the developments affecting them."
. . . The story of one international union
is dramatically told in pictures and text
in ILGWU Illustrated, a history of this
organization of ladies' garment workers
from 1900 to 1937. ... The National
OCTOBER 1937
Child Labor Committee, 419 Fourth
Avenue, New York, offers a useful
round-up of information in a new Study
Outline on Pending Federal Child Labor
Legislation.
For Industrial Peace
J^EWARK, N. ]., recently was added
to the short list of American cities
which have set up local agencies to con-
ciliate and arbitrate industrial disputes,
in the effort to forestall or shorten
strikes. The Newark Municipal Labor
Board is made up of ten members, three
representing labor, three representing
employers, and four, the public. Although
the board cannot legally end disputes, its
services will be available both to em-
ployers and employed. The executive
director will try to handle minor difficul-
ties, but if these informal negotiations
break down the dispute will be placed be-
fore the whole board. The experiment
was suggested to the City Commission by
Mayor Meyer C. Ellenstein.
Wisconsin — The law creating the Wis-
consin Labor Relations Board, passed in
March 1937, is very similar to the Wag-
ner act. The chief differences are: it
definitely prohibits company unions, and
such unions, "initiated, financed or domi-
nated by the employer," cannot even be
put on the ballot in elections to deter-
mine the collective bargaining agency;
only unions listed by the board are en-
titled to the advantages of the act, and
the board may list only bona fide labor
unions. The Wisconsin law expressly
sanctions closed shop agreements; it vests
the board with duties of mediation, and
provides for cooperating committees of
employers and employes.
The board was established April 27,
I WAGE/ AMP HOUB/1
Each figure represents 5 percent of all strikes
in U.S. in 1936.
Causes of Disputes
In its last session, the Pennsylvania legis-
lature set up machinery within the state for
collective bargaining and mediation. The
state labor department offers a pamphlet,
setting forth in simple text and many charts
"how industrial differences may be settled
peacefully and fairly, giving the worker the
recognition that is his right, and the
employer the protection that is his due."
and its first report, to the close of the
fiscal year, July 1, states that 197 formal
and informal cases had been considered,
with settlement by mediation and infor-
mal conferences "in a very large percent-
age of the cases brought before it." Board
and staff members also had assisted in
the settlement of sixty-five strikes involv-
ing more than 13,000 persons. "There has
been a progressive decrease in the number
of strikes and the number of employes in-
volved since the board started to operate."
Toledo — The first municipal agency for
dealing with labor disputes, Toledo's In-
dustrial Peace Board, recently celebrated
its second birthday, and summarized its
activities to date. The board has acted
on issues involving from one to three
thousand workers, and has settled sixty-
two out of a total of eighty-eight "cases"
before they reached the strike stage. The
board is now part of the municipal gov-
ernment, supported by public funds. The
1937 appropriation of $7250 covers the
salaries of the director, a stenographer
and "incidentals." There is a panel of
eighteen non-paid members of the board.
The procedure is the same as when the
board was created: "It mediates, never
arbitrates; suggests, never issues orders;
operates with a minimum of publicity;
never issues statements of opinion; and
does not and cannot compel employers or
labor organizations to meet with it"
New York— New York's recently es-
tablished State Board of Mediation had,
as one of its first cases, a strike of service
employes of the Hudson Terminal Build-
ings in New York City. The workers
demanded higher wages and improved
working conditions, and the strike devel-
oped a good deal of violence. Through the
efforts of the mediation board, the strike
was settled with an agreement granting
wage raises of from 5 to 7 percent, and
recognizing the Building Service Em-
ployes International Union, affiliated with
the CIO, as the bargaining agency for
the workers.
Milwaukee — A recent Milwaukee or-
dinance authorizes the appointment by
the mayor of a committee made up of
three representatives of labor, three rep-
resentatives of employers, three of the
churches. This committee is directed to
inquire into such industrial disputes as
they arise, and to make "advisory find-
ings" on three points: Has the employer
refused to meet with representatives of
employes for the purpose of collective
bargaining? Does his refusal cause the
assemblage of two hundred or more per-
sons within an area of half an acre ad-
jacent to his place of business? Does this
assemblage constitute a danger to life,
limb and property? Based on these find-
ings, the mayor issues an order. Any em-
323
ployer failing to conform to it is subject
to fine and imprisonment.
Record and Report — Labor Rela-
tions Reports is a new weekly news ser-
vice, covering events, court and labor
board decisions in its field. Edited by
Dean Dinwoody, it is published by the
Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Wash-
ington, D. C. . . . The City's Role in
Strikes offers "a new outlook and sug-
gested techniques for municipal officials"
in time of trouble. (International City
Managers' Association, Chicago. Price
50 cents.)
Old Age Benefits
A SUMMARY of the Social Security
Board's activities as of September
15 showed the old age benefits program
in full swing, with approximately 33,-
500,000 applications for accounts.
Bookkeeping — As the first step toward
paying future benefits, the Social Secu-
rity Board is posting the amounts earned
by 32 million workers during the first
six months of 1937. This vast bookkeep-
ing task is being performed by machines
"with human help." Three thousand
workers on night and day shifts are re-
quired, to make and check the records.
The Bureau of Federal Old Age Bene-
fits is reported to be experimenting with
a plan for decentralizing the records. If
it succeeds, the records will eventually
be transferred to field offices. . . . Be-
cause of inadequate identification of per-
sons on whose wages taxes have been
paid, the Social Security Board is finding
it necessary to credit thousands of dol-
lars of earnings to the accounts of un-
identified persons. The board's policy is
to set up a "John Doe" account, on the
theory that some day the employe may
claim his earnings credits and be satis-
factorily identified. It is feared, how-
ever, that a large sum of earnings will
never be accounted for.
Bank Proposals — A private pension
plan has been recommended to the 815
members of the Illinois Bankers Asso-
ciation. Under the proposed plan em-
ployes would get 40 to 50 percent of
their salaries when they retire at sixty-
five. Contributions would range from 4
to 6 percent of salaries, depending on
their ages, and the banks would con-
tribute an equal amount. Should the so-
cial security act be amended to cover
employes of national banks, the plan
could be modified so that total pay-
ments would be no higher than under
the private plan. ... A plan for a
self-administered joint old age benefit
system for the banks of New York State,
on which the state Bankers' Association
has worked for two years, has been com-
pleted. It is expected that it will be put
into operation by January 1. Employes'
contributions will amount to 4 percent
of their salaries. Employer contributions
will vary somewhat, but will run to
about 5 percent of total payrolls. The
plan covers three major hazards: death,
old age, total and permanent disability.
Private Plans — Federal Judge Julian
W. Mack has authorized the receiver for
the I.R.T., one of New York City's sub-
way systems, to wind up the company's
present pension plan, refund $1,500,000
paid into it by employes, and establish a
new program conforming to the social
security act. All pensions in effect Au-
gust 1, 1937, are to be paid to their
beneficiaries for life. . . . The private
retirement plan for employes of the In-
ternational Harvester Company has been
modified, to provide a larger measure of
old age security for employes with long
service records.
Veterans' Demand — At the annual
encampment of the Veterans of Foreign
Wars, held recently in Buffalo, N. Y.,
the Washington lobbyist of the organi-
zation was instructed to demand revision
of the social security act so that unem-
ployable foreign war veterans can begin
to draw old age benefits at the age of
fifty instead of sixty-five.
Old Age Assistance
RESUMPTION of federal grants to
Illinois for old age assistance was
announced August 30, just about a month
after their suspension because of Illinois'
failure to conform with requirements
of the federal social security act. It was
announced that Illinois had "taken steps
to bring its administration of old age
assistance into conformity with the act,
by effecting necessary revisions in the
set-up and operation of the state plan."
Assurance was given, also, of further
improvements and strengthening of the
present state organization. Specifically,
changes by which Illinois regained official
favor involved: financial and accounting
records; fair hearing procedures for those
whose claims for assistance are denied;
more accurate statistical reporting; ad-
ministrative changes making for increased
competency of personnel.
The salubrious effect of the Illinois
example is seen in various parts of the
country, in newspapers, professional bul-
letins, welfare publications. In one state
the local administrators were asked to
double-check their procedures against the
points of criticism brought against Illi-
nois. In another, a newspaper editorial
took this occasion to warn of the dangers
of inefficient or politically-minded admin-
istration of social security programs. One
state welfare administration, while con-
cluding that it was not vulnerable on any
of the points mentioned, warned counties
that the breakdown of even one of them
could jeopardize the whole state program.
Meanest — The "meanest racket" has
cropped out in Tennessee, where it was
revealed by an old age assistance client,
calling to ask why her check had not
arrived, that she had paid someone a dol-
lar "to speed it up."
Golden State — A new law recently
signed by the governor of California lib-
eralizes provisions for old age assistance,
allowing recipients to own real property
not to exceed $3000 assessed valuation
and personal property up to $300, and to
have an outside income up to $15 a month
without deductions. "Pension payments
under the revised measure will not con-
stitute liens on property" and all such
liens heretofore created are released. All
references to pensioners as paupers or
indigents are removed. California's basic
provision of a $35 monthly old age as-
sistance payment and sixty-five year age
requirement are unchanged.
A new welfare and institutions law,
the work of the last state legislature,
which became operative September 1, re-
quires California counties to start legal
action against legally responsible rela-
tives of persons receiving old age assist-
ance, aid to the blind or indigent aid,
if relatives are financially able to assist.
The state welfare board has opened war
on pension "chiselers" said to be trans-
ferring property to other persons in or-
der to be eligible for old age assistance.
It is expected that cases of alleged fraud
will be investigated by district attorneys
or the attorney general.
Lows and Highs — Calculating by a
"tentative census" of the anticipated
number of eligibles for old age assistance
in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, and do-
ing some mathematical conjuring, local
newspapers reported that probably some
700 claimants in Oglethorpe County
would receive each about $1.50 a month.
The average for the state, however, is
reported as around $10. . . . Minnesota,
on the other hand, has set its newspapers
speculating by its average old age assist-
ance payment of $19.39, compared with
a national average of $18.63. Further-
more, 325 persons in each thousand of
specified age are on Minnesota's old age
assistance rolls, compared to a national
average of 190 per thousand. Either Min-
nesota is too liberal or other states too
niggardly, says the Minneapolis Journal.
No Money for Maine — A referen-
dum on a proposed 1 percent retail sales
tax to finance old age assistance and edu-
cational measures was overwhelmingly
rejected by voters of Maine. State Sena-
tor Roy L. Fernald campaigned against
the measure, calling it "an attempt to
hide a thoroughly unpopular tax behind
324
the popularity of old age and education."
He insisted that the necessary $1,200,000
could be saved from other state expendi-
tures.
However, at last reports old age as-
sistance offices in leading cities of Maine
had been closed, there being no money to
continue operation, according to State
Welfare Commissioner Leadbetter. Last
available funds came from a supplement-
ary appropriation voted by the legislature,
pending the vote on the sales tax. These,
with federal matching grants made up
about half the scheduled payments for
August.
The Public's Health
\X/"ITH infantile paralysis reaching
serious proportions in many sections
of the country, President Roosevelt has
announced the formation of a new na-
tional foundation "to lead, direct and
unify the fight on every phase of this dis-
ease." Although entirely separate from
the Warm Springs Foundation and the
hundred or so similar centers which treat
the after-effects of the disease, the foun-
dation will work with the treatment cen-
ters and the sixteen research centers now
seeking means of prevention. It will carry
on also "a broad-gauged educational cam-
paign, prepared under expert medical
supervision," to reach the professional
and lay public. It will go further and
study means of helping the sufferers from
after-effects of the disease to become eco-
nomically independent in their local com-
munities.
At this writing personnel, sponsors and
means of financing have not been an-
nounced. Although at present "unable to
take an official part" in developing the
foundation, President Roosevelt has de-
clared himself "whole-heartedly in this
cause."
For Rural Health — An increase of
279 county health units in the United
States since federal social security funds
became available is reported by Arthur
J. Altmeyer, chairman of the Social Se-
curity Board.
A total of 946 counties now have health
units. A strong impetus to dental health
provisions also is seen in the fact that
nine states are spending public health
funds for dental' services and thirty-one
have included dental services to mothers
and children in their maternal and child
health plans.
A recent gift to the Boston Dispensary
from William Bingham, 2d, Maine phil-
anthropist, will create a medical center
for rural physicians of New England,
said to be the first of its kind. Mr. Bing-
ham has contributed a total of $400,000
to build a diagnostic hospital and finance
its operation. Specifically, the gift is de-
signed to provide a medical center "at
which the development of rural medicine
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may be planned and supervised." Through
this medium new developments in medi-
cal science will be made available to the
country doctor, usually slow to discover
such advances because of his isolation
and his busy life. In addition to this ser-
vice, the new hospital will provide for
patients from any economic group, in
any corner of New England, the latest
diagnostic facilities and medical advice.
Consultation with specialists also will be
made available to country doctors.
Very Vital — Recent vital statistics is-
sued by the U.S. Bureau of Census show
a rising infant mortality rate, declining
birthrate and rising deathrate. The in-
fant mortality rate, nation-wide, rose
from 55.7 per thousand in 1935 to 56.9
in 1936. Connecticut had the lowest rate
(42.1) while New Mexico had the high-
est (114.7) for the year just reported.
The best record for any city of 100,000
or over was earned by New Haven with
a record of 33.3. The infant mortality
rate in New York City dropped from
47.8 in 1935 to 45.3 in 1936.
The year reported (1936) was the
second consecutive year to show a drop
in the birthrate, it being only one tenth
of a point above the all-time low of 16.5,
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
325
recorded in 1933. New York's birthrate
has dropped from 19.0 in 1927 to 14.1
in 1936. Deathrates for recent years are:
10.7 in 1933, 11.0 in 1934, 10.9 in 1935,
and 11.5 in 1936.
Neighbor's Health
CINCE last February eligible ships
manned by eligible physicians have
been allowed to apply by radio at the port
of New York for medical clearance be-
fore reaching Quarantine. [See The Sur-
vey, May 1937, page 159.] This system,
known as radio pratique, has expedited
traffic considerably. Practically all the
big transatlantic liners have been put on
the list. There have been 565 ship arriv-
als under the system.
Last month came the first slip-up in the
system. The Hamburg-American liner,
Hansa, cleared by radio pratique, was
found to have typhoid aboard, the ship's
doctor having mistaken it for fumigation
gas poisoning. The Hansa has now been
dropped from the eligible list until certi-
fication that all sources of infection have
been removed; her doctor has been de-
clared permanently ineligible. Passengers
who had left the ship when the trouble
was discovered were followed up through
their local health officers. So far as is
known, no local cases have resulted from
the incident.
Greatest Disease — The London letter
of the Journal of the American Medical
Association reports the growth among
members of the British medical profes-
sion of an anti-war movement. Lord Hor-
der, addressing the Royal Institution of
Great Britain, recently declared that,
"War is the greatest of all modern dis-
eases, though it is primarily a disease of
the mind and not of the body. . . . Sci-
ence has enormously reduced the casual-
ties due to the attack of the microbe on
man; but science has increased in much
greater proportion the casualties due to
the attack of man on man." An organiza-
tion of physicians in England has formed
the Medical Peace Campaign, with a
platform directed toward international
amity, through the League of Nations.
The British Medical Association, at its
last annual meeting, voted the appoint-
ment of a committee to consider and re-
port on psychologic causes of war, and to
press for an international section under
the Health Organization of the League
of Nations to deal with the psychology
of war, on lines similar to the present
section on epidemiology.
Moderation in Mexico — From the
news letter of the foreign information
bureau, National Revolutionary Party,
Mexico, D. F. comes the statement that
"temperance rather than prohibition is
the aim of Mexico's anti-alcoholic cam-
paign"; that the "dismal failure" of the
Volstead Law of the United States is
taken as demonstration that it would be
"imprudent for Mexico to insist on total-
itarian dryness," but that measures must
be taken for moderation. The campaign,
launched over a year ago and said to have
the full support of President Cardenas,
now has reached the stage of bill-drafting.
The new bill proposes regulation of la-
bels and of advertising and propaganda
for bottled drinks; fines and imprison-
ments against adulteration; prohibition
of production, sale or consumption of
drinks containing more than 60 percent
alcohol, of absinthe in all forms, and of
the sale of alcoholic beverages on holi-
days and under certain other special cir-
cumstances. Taxes would be levied ac-
cording to alcoholic content.
Professional
A NEW program of professional edu-
^* cation in social work has been an-
nounced by the Hartford, Conn. Council
of Social Agencies, with the aim of ex-
ploring in a preliminary way the possi-
bilities of developing a fully accredited
school of social work in Connecticut. De-
spite the avowedly experimental nature
of the project, the courses are planned
to conform with standards of the Ameri-
can Association of Schools of Social
Work and to include nearly aill the
courses which make up the basis of a
professional social work curriculum. The
work is for employed social workers in
Hartford and vicinity. In general, a col-
legiate bachelor's degree will be prerequi-
site, though some exceptions will be al-
lowed. Leroy A. Ramsdell, executive of
the Hartford Council of Social Agen-
cies, is director. A representative group
of Connecticut social work executives
make up most of the advisory committee.
Working Agreement — Because of the
proximity of dates and frequent confusion
in the public mind between the Red
Cross roll call and the Christmas seal
campaign of the National Tuberculosis
Association, the two organizations have
worked out a cooperative arrangement
for 1937. In summary, the organizations
agree that there is no official or other
connection between the two campaigns;
that their dates shall be, respectively,
Red Cross roll call from November 11
up to and including Thanksgiving Day,
November 25; tuberculosis seal sale from
the day after Thanksgiving; that both,
in cooperation with their local agencies,
will make definite efforts to publicize and
clarify their respective functions and
characters and to avoid overlapping. It
is specified that restrictions of dates shall
apply only to the fund-raising periods
and shall not interfere with year-round
educational work or pre-campaign pub-
licity.
Pursuit of Knowledge — A course on
The Child and Society, given under the
department of education of the Yale
Graduate School by Dr. Orval H. Mow-
rer, is open this fall to parents, social
workers and others concerned with the
care and training of children. According
to the announcement, Dr. Mowrer, who
is a member of the Yale Institute of
Human Relations, will consider both
practical and theoretical aspects of the
processes through which the child ac-
quires "those ways of feeling and acting
which are considered socially appropri-
ate," and the consequences of inadequate
or inappropriate child training. ... A
course in education of the blind, given
previously as extension work is now offered
as a regular course in the Harvard Grad-
uate School of Education in cooperation
with various public and private agencies
for the blind in Massachusetts. The
course includes a comprehensive survey
of work with the blind, teaching prob-
lems, opportunity for reading, research,
and observation of special method and
practice. (Address Dr. Edward E. Allen,
lecturer, Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University.)
A current course on juvenile delin-
quency— causes, prevention, treatment —
under auspices of the Rand School of So-
cial Science in New York is offered to so-
cial workers, teachers, parents, probation
officers. Twenty lecturers of note in
special fields are participating in the four-
teen sessions. (Address Jack Afres, at the
school, 7 East 15 Street, New York.)
New York University this year in-
augurated a series of "courses for the
public service," designed as training for
those preparing to enter or to advance in
a wide range of government jobs. Sub-
jects offered include: administration —
state, local, financial, public welfare ;
social security, personnel, employment
service. Apply to Paul A. McGhee, divi-
sion of general education of the univers-
ity, 20 Washington Square North, New
York.
More Psychiatry — The New York
School of Social Work, in cooperation
with the Manhattan children's court of
the city court of domestic relations, is
planning a demonstration of what may be
accomplished in the treatment of "re-
peater" juvenile delinquents by the use
of improved methods. A training unit of
eight graduate students, supervised by
Madeleine Lay, New York School gradu-
ate who has been teaching at the Univer-
sity of Chicago, will be attached to the
psychiatric clinic of the court.
Dr. Helen Montague, clinic director,
and Dr. Marion E. Kenworthy of the
mental hygiene faculty of the school will
supervise the demonstration. Observa-
tions will be made of the efficacy of
needed psychological and psychiatric
treatment in reducing the number of per-
sistent juvenile offenders.
The New York City Board of Educa-
tion recently announced a plan to em-
ploy eighteen psychiatric social workers
for the public school system within the
next three years at the rate of six each
year. According to the announcement,
emphasis will be put on relations between
parents and children and home visits will
be made in an effort to adjust differences
within the family. Pointing out that
special attention to the maladjusted and
anti-social child is in line with the board's
general policy of expanding the work of
the bureau of child guidance, the chair-
man of the board of examiners has an-
nounced that the work will be on a high
scientific level; that "candidates must
know sociology, psychology and social
work," and that a baccalaureate degree
or equivalent preparation and graduation
from an approved school of social work
will be required, besides two years
specialized professional experience.
Growing Support — Taking apart its
1937 campaign results from 126 cities,
the Community Chests and Coun-
cils, Inc. has pulled out some significant
findings. It found, for example, that the
actual number of contributors to the past
year's campaigns was 16 percent higher
than in the boom year of 1929; 7 per-
326
THE SURVEY
cent higher than in 1936. The average
gift was the highest in a number of years,
$9.95. In the cities studied an average
of eighteen persons out of each hundred
of population contributed to community
chests.
Final results of last fall's roll call by
the American Red Cross show the sub-
stantial increase of 766,680 members over
the previous year, the largest gain in any
one year since the World War period.
The membership total in the last roll call
was 4,904,316.
To Examine and Report — A new
legislative commission in New York state
will "examine, report upon and recom-
mend measures to improve facilities for
hard of hearing and deaf children and
children liable to become deaf." Ap-
pointed to the commission in addition to
legislative members and the state com-
missioners of health and education are
representatives of the State Medical So-
ciety, the New York League for the
Hard of Hearing and the New York
School for the Deaf. . . . Another im-
portant New York commission created
by the last legislature is instructed to
"seek ways of improving the economic
cultural, health and living conditions of
the colored population of the state."
The commission plans to study housing,
recreation and unemployment among Ne-
groes in the state. (Headquarters, Room
710, the Bar Building, 36 West 44 Street,
New York.)
Coming Events — The National Asso-
ciation for Nursery Education will meet
October 20-24 at Nashville, Tenn. . . .
National Hearing Week will be observed
October 24-30, under sponsorship of the
American Society for the Hard of Hear-
ing. Public attention will be directed to
the importance of testing the hearing of
school children. . . . The Child Research
Clinic of the Woods Schools, Langhorne,
Pa., announces an institute on the excep-
tional child, on October 26 at the school.
. . . The American Vocational Associa-
tion will meet December 1-4 in Balti-
more, Md. . . . The American College of
Surgeons will hold its annual clinical
congress October 25 in Chicago.
London Echo — To perpetuate the
contacts made last year at the summer
school in British social work which pre-
ceded the International Conference of
Social Work in London, an informal
alumni association was formed with El-
wood Street of Washington, D. C. as
its secretary. Mr. Street has now issued
the first bulletin of the association, a fat
mimeographed sheaf of fifty or so pages.
It includes lists of national organizations
of social workers in the countries repre-
sented at the London school, together
with lists of periodicals, handbooks, and
books of social work significance in each
of the countries. Appended are personal
notes from many of the American dele-
gates recounting their recent activities.
"All except the Americans," says Mr.
Street, "seemed too reticent to tell what
they have been doing."
People and Things
' I *HE distinguished achievements of Dr.
William Freeman Snow in public
health, education and particularly the de-
velopment of the social hygiene move-
ment were recognized this month with
a dinner, spon-
sored by lead-
ers in health
and social work.
D r. Snow's
vigorous career
during nearly
forty years was
reviewed — his
services all over
the country as
adviser to or-
ganizations devoted to social hygiene and
sex education; his achievements as pilot,
since its beginnings, of the American So-
cal Hygiene Association ; and his pres-
ent association with Surgeon General
Thomas Parran as consultant and liaison
in the current campaign to rid the nation
of syphilis.
Public Service — Justin Miller, who
has combined an active participation in
social work with his law career, recently
was nominated for associate justice of the
Court of Appeals, District of Columbia.
A past president of both the California
and the North Carolina Conferences of
Social Work, Judge Miller has been
especially active in probation and juvenile
delinquency fields. Not many months be-
fore his latest nomination, he was made
a member of the federal Board of Tax
Appeals.
Byrnes MacDonald, who has been in
charge of New York City's Juvenile
Aid Bureau, recently was appointed first
deputy commissioner of the city Depart-
ment of Welfare. John H. Morris, Har-
vard graduate and recently assistant
headmaster of the Newman School, Lake-
wood, N. J. becomes head of the Juvenile
Aid Bureau.
Morris Zelditch, from the Children's
Service Bureau of Pittsburgh, and for
many years a volunteer in social work,
has been appointed chief of social ser-
vice in Pittsburgh's city Department of
Welfare.
Kate O'Connor, for four years head of
the minimum wage division of the Illinois
Department of Labor, has been made
chief of the new division of women's
and children's employment which will
give special attention to enforcement of
the eight-hour day law, minimum wage
law, regulation of industrial homework.
The resignation of Edward F. Mc-
Grady, Assistant Secretary of Labor, re-
cently was accepted "with regret" by
President Roosevelt. Mr. McGrady is
leaving public office to become director of
labor relations for the Radio Corporation
of America.
Michigan's new civil service law, effec-
tive January 1, 1938, authorizes appoint-
ment of the state's first personnel direc-
tor. Governor Frank Murphy chose Wil-
liam E. Brownrigg, now on a year's leave
of absence from his job as executive of
the California personnel board. Mr.
Brownrigg already is at work installing
Michigan's new merit system.
1937-38 Faculties— The Boston Col-
lege School of Social Work this year has
added to its faculty: Patrick H. Moyni-
han, director of Overseers of Public
Welfare, Boston; Dorothy Lally, from
the Department of Public Welfare of
Schenectady, N.Y. and formerly with the
New York City Charity Organization
Society; and Edward J. Rhatigan, as-
sistant director of old age assistance in
the New York State Department of Wel-
fare. . . . New additions to the teaching
staff of Fordham University School' of
Social Service are Mary Laughead, for-
merly with the New York State Tempo-
rary Emergency Relief Administration,
and Catherine Purcell from Charity Hos-
pital, New Orleans, La. . . . The Uni-
versity of Chicago School of Social Ser-
vice, in its 1937-38 announcement, lists
as lecturers in public welfare administra-
tion: Frank Bane, executive director of
the Social Security Board; Fred K.
Hoehler, director of the American Pub-
lic Welfare Association; and Charlotte
E. Carr, new head of Hull-House.
Robert T. Lansdale, lately with the
Social Science Research Council, has
joined the faculty of the New York
School of Social Work. He will be full
time with the school and during the
year will offer courses in the public as-
sistance and child welfare aspects of the
social security program, and in other
public welfare and community organiza-
tion areas. Mr. Lansdale was for four
years assistant to the U.S. Commissioner
of Indian Affairs and later did research
for FERA.
Appointed — A special commission has
been appointed by Gov. Herbert H. Leh-
man of New York to make a study and
survey of the prevalence and facilities for
treatment of cancer within the state. Be-
sides six legislative appointees members
include: Dr. Floyd Winslow, past presi-
dent of the State Medical Society, Dr.
Edward S. Godfrey, Jr., state commis-
sioner of health (who serves ex-officio)
and Dr. James Ewing, pathologist and
director of cancer research at Memorial
Hospital, New York. The commission
has a $15,000 appropriation and will re-
port to the 1938 legislature.
Prof. George E. Bigge, head of the
department of economics at Brown Uni-
OCTOBER 1937
327
versity, has been appointed by President
Roosevelt as a member of the Social Se-
curity Board, to succeed John G. Winant,
resigned. Professor Bigge's appointment
is for the term expiring August 31, 1941.
Mary W. Dewson of New York is a
new member of the board. Both have
been confirmed by the Senate.
The Public Administration Clearing
House has announced the appointment of
Herbert Emmerich, heretofore deputy
governor of the Farm Credit Administra-
tion, to be its associate director.
The American Institute of Public
Opinion has appointed Claude E. Robin-
son of New York, economist and statisti-
cian, to be associate director.
William Haber, whose resignation
from Michigan's relief administration re-
cently was announced [see The Survey,
September 15, page 297] has been called
in by Massachusetts as technical consul-
tant on public welfare for a commission
on taxation and public expenditure ap-
pointed by the state legislature.
Good News — Legion is the name of
the- host of friends of Porter R. Lee who
are rejoicing these days in his recovery
from the severe illness which cut short
his South Seas voyaging last spring and
which remained critical long after his
return to New York. Mr. Lee is back
this month at the New York School of
Social Work with no reservations except
his physician's advice to work up to full
time by easy stages.
Comings and Goings — Eleanor Han-
son recently retired after directing the
Family Society of Allegheny County, Pa.
for twenty-nine of its thirty years of
existence. Until January 1 Miss Hanson
will continue to serve as a volunteer and
Mary J. R. Condon, former assistant gen-
eral secretary, will be acting executive.
. . . The Rev. Earl M. Smith, of Rich-
field, Calif, sailed recently for Spain to
superintend the child feeding mission of
the American Friends Service Committee,
succeeding Wilfred V. Jones of Chicago,
who has been in Spain since last May set-
ting up a relief organization in Spanish
Nationalist territory. Esther L. Farqu-
har, of Cleveland, Ohio represents the
committee in Loyalist Spain. . . . Clara
Somerville, who has done social work
with the New Jersey and Florida emer-
gency relief administrations and research
with the National Probation Association
recently was married to Theodore O.
Withee and is "at home in Conrad, Mon-
tana."
The National Tuberculosis Associa-
tion has a new publicity director, Daniel
C. McCarthy, recently assistant editor
of the Columbia University Alumni News
who has varied newspaper and publicity
experience.
Helen C. Young, alumna of both the
Boston and the New York Children's
Aid Society staffs and for several years
assistant to Gladys Fisher, now has suc-
ceeded her as director of the Westches-
ter County, N. Y., Department of Family
and Child Welfare Service and Old Age
Relief. . . . Julia Craighead Brown has
been appointed vocational counselor for
the department, her salary to be paid by
the Westchester County Children's As-
sociation. One of her jobs will be to
investigate employment and placement
possibilities in the county for children
"graduating" from the rolls of the de-
partment at age sixteen.
A realignment of staff at the New
York League for the Hard of Hearing
has put Annetta W. Peck, executive sec-
retary for many years, on special duty in
the field, and has promoted Estelle W.
Samuelson to the executive desk.
Elected — The National Tuberculosis
Association chose as president for the
coming year, Dr. J. Arthur Myers of
Minneapolis. George J. Nelbach of New
York is the new president of the Na-
tional Conference of Tuberculosis Secre-
taries. . . . Helen Judy Bond of Teachers
College, Columbia University, has been
elected the next president of the Home
Economics Association. She will succeed
Kathryn Van Aken Burns of Illinois
University, now beginning the second
half of her two-year term as president.
... At its recent session in Tokyo, Ja-
pan, the World Federation of Educa-
tional Associations chose Paul Monroe of
Columbia University to be its president.
... At the recent annual meeting of the
Ohio Welfare Conference, Arch Mandel,
Dayton, was chosen president and
Charles A. Neal, Cincinnati and Esther
McClain, Columbus, vice-presidents.
Married — The marriage of Karl de
Schweinitz, secretary of the Pennsylvania
State Department of Public Assistance,
and Elizabeth McCord, associated with
the Pennsylvania School of Social Work
and lately on the staff of the Social Secu-
rity Board, was an event of the late
Chests and Councils — A flock of
changes are occurring these months in
community chests and councils of social
agencies. Carter Taylor for ten years
director of the Harrisburg, Pa. Welfare
Federation, is the new chest executive at
Houston, Tex., succeeding Dr. J. W.
Slaughter who resigned to become di-
rector of the Houston Foundation. . . .
Irene Farnham Conrad, recently with the
Louisiana State Department of Welfare,
has also gone to Houston, where she will
be secretary of the council of social agen-
cies. . . . Chester C. Ridge, from the
Indianapolis Community Fund, has be-
come secretary of the Grand Rapids,
Mich., chest succeeding Thomas Devine,
recently resigned. . . . Arthur J. Derby-
shire, with the Utica, N. Y. chest since
it? organization and prominent in tht
New York State Conference of Social
Work, has gone to the Munson-Will-
iams-Proctor Institute of Utica, to be
director of its community program. . . .
Lynn D. Mowat, campaign director of
the Los Angeles Community Welfare
Federation, now becomes general man-
ager, succeeding D. C. MacWatters, re-
signed. . . . James Dunn, long director
of the Toledo, Ohio community chest,
has resigned and is succeeded by Ray-
mond Loftus, who has been Boy Scout
executive in Toledo. . . . Richard H.
Lyle has resigned as executive of the
Nashville, Tenn. chest to become director
of prison industries for the state of Ten-
nessee. D. F. C. Reeves succeeds him as
chest director. . . . Louise Root from
Cleveland is the new executive of the
Milwaukee Council of Social Agencies.
. . . Ruth Lauder from the United
Charities of Chicago, is a new member
of the publicity staff of the Washington,
D. C. chest and council.
Community chesters hail as future or-
naments to their profession the brand
new twin sons of David Liggett, long
identified with the community fund in
Indianapolis and for the past two years
in Minneapolis.
For the Blind — MacEnnis Moore, of
late years very busy combining in one
person the executive secretary of the
Committee on Care of the Transient and
Homeless and staff associate of the Na-
tional Association for Travelers' Aid and
Transient Service, now has a new job.
He is field representative for the Ameri-
can Foundation for the Blind. Eber L.
Palmer, for some years assistant director
of the foundation, is the new superinten-
dent of the New York State School for
the Blind at Batavia. . . . Stella Plants,
widely experienced in social work though
she is herself without sight, has been en-
gaged by the Washington, D. C. Council
of Social Agencies to carry on a program
of service to the blind.
Deaths
MARIETTA COLLINS, assistant headwork-
er at the Orange Valley Social Settle-
ment of Orange, N. J. For forty-five
years a social worker, she had worked
with the Henry Street, Doyer Street,
Hudson Guild and other settlements and
was at one time superintendent of the
Henrietta Evening Trade School in New
York.
GEORGE H. SIMMONS, editor and general
manager emeritus of the Journal of the
American Medical Association.
CHARLES F. THWING, president emeritus
of Western Reserve University; author,
teacher, internationalist, known as "the
senior college president of America."
328
THE PAMPHLET SHELF
Public's Welfare
RELIEF AND REHABILITATION IN
THE DROUGHT AREA, prepared by
Irene Link. WPA research bulletin, series
5, number 3. 57 pp. From superintendent
of documents, Washington, D.C.
Third of a series of WPA studies of con-
ditions in the so-called "drought states,"
this undertakes to measure the trend and
scope of federal relief programs in those:
areas, .as well as the personal and occupa-
tional characteristics of the families con-
cerned. The study was made under super-
vision of the WPA division of social re-
search, and the Resettlement Administra-
tion's bureau of agricultural economics
and social research. It contains exhaus-
tive tabulations and charts of all types
of relief given in drought states from
1932 through June 1935.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS
AND GOVERNMENT, by Harold G. Mpul-
ton. The Brookings Institution, Washing-
ton, D. C. 18 pp.
The author's presidential address at the
1937 meeting of the trustees of the Institu-
tion. His purpose, he says, is not to suggest
policies but "to lay before you the pri-
mary requirements for the restoration and
expansion of the standards of living of the
American people as revealed by our in-
vestigations."
A SURVEY OF THE TRANSIENT AND
HOMELESS POPULATION IN TWELVE
CITIES: SEPTEMBER 1935 AND SEP-
TEMBER 1936. Prepared under the super-
vision of John N. Webb for the division of
social research. Works Progress Administra-
tion, Washington, D. C. 52 pp.
A check-up a year after the transient
bureaus of FERA suspended intake shows
a marked decline in the size of the needy
transient and homeless population and a
change in the personal characteristics of
the group. Family cases and interstate
transiency declined; the proportion of older
persons and of women increased.
People
RETREAT FROM REASON, by Lancelot T.
Hogben. Hampshire Book Shop, Northamp-
ton, Mass., and the Channel Bookshop, New
York. 102 pp. Price 75 cents direct from
publisher.
Acting as chairman at this twenty-
seventh Moncure Conway Memorial Lec-
ture, delivered at Smith College, Julian
Huxley said: "Professor Hogben's ideal is
a scientific humanism; he is one of the
rare few who can claim to talk with au-
thority on such a subject."
PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY AND
SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT, by Robert Lee-
per, Cornell College. Mt. Vernon, la. 61 pp.
Price 75 cents from the author.
A handbook, developed by the author
out of classroom experience, designed to
aid more or less beginning students of
psychology- to give functional significance
to abstract concepts. Includes reading lists
and suggestions for projects.
NEW AMERICANS IN ALLEGHENY
COUNTY, A CULTURAL STUDY, by Mary E
Hurlbutt. New York School of Social Work,
122 East 22 Street, New York. '114 pp.
Price 75 cents from the school.
A preprint from the study, Greater
Pittsburgh, the Community and Social
Work, by Philip Klein and collaborators.
\vhich will be published this fall by Co-
lumbia University Press.
FARMERS WITHOUT LAND, by Rupert
B. Vance. Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 12.
Public Affairs Committee. 8 West 40 Street,
New York. Price 10 cents.
A dispassionate picture of the most de-
pressed area in American life, based on
recent studies of farm tenancy, including
the report of the President's Tenancy
Commission.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF PSYCHIATRY
TO AN UNDERSTANDING OF MOD-
ERN SOCIETY. American Journal of So-
ciology, May 1937. University of Chicago
Press. Price $1.
A symposium of seven articles by dis-
tinguished authorities, edited by Ernest W.
Burgess, designed to raise and clarify is-
sues in the area in which psychiatry and
sociology overlap.
Concerning Health
SYMPOSIUM ON PRENATAL AND CON-
GENITAL INFECTIONS IN RELATION
TO BLINDNESS AND IMPAIRED VI-
SION. Proceedings, Annual Conference of
the National Society for the Prevention of
Blindness. Price 20 cents.
ROUTINE WASSERMAN TEST FOR ALL
EXPECTANT MOTHERS. Reprinted from
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gyne-
cology. Price 5 cents.
PREVENTING BLINDNESS THROUGH
SOCIAL HYGIENE COOPERATION, by
Louis Carris.
All are published by the National Society
for the Prevention of Blindness, 50 West
50 Street, New York City.
LIFE SAVING AND WATER SAFETY,
prepared by the American Red Cross; pub-
lished by P. Blakiston's Son and Co. Phila-
delphia. 267 pp. Price 60 cents; less in
quantity.
After more than twenty years of teach-
ing water safety the American Red Cross
has brought together into a single text
book, fully illustrated, the material hitherto
available only in pamphlets and leaflets.
HOME CARE FOR COMMUNICABLE
DISEASES:
WAISTLINES (Overweight), by W. W.
Bauer. M.D.
CONCERNING DIABETES, by Albert A.
Horner, M.D.
Popular sized, popular interpretation put
out by the Life Conservation Service.
John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance
Company, Boston, Mass. Free.
RELIEF AND HEALTH PROBLEMS OF
A SELECTED GROUP OF NON-FAMILY
MEN, by Glenn Johnson. The University
of Chicago Press. Price 50 cents.
The result of a study of 144 non-family
men in Chicago, with reference to living
quarters, degree of sanitation and nourish-
ment, the extent to which they have re-
ceived relief, and how much they need.
HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON
RELIGION AND MEDICINE OF THE
FEDERAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
OF CHRIST IN AMERICA AND THE
NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDI-
CINE. From the council, 105 East 22
Street, New York.
A report of the work of a committee
formed in 1923 "proposing to investigate
the border territory between religion and
medicine," and to discuss the possibility
of better cooperation between religion and
medicine in maintaining health and curing
disease.
ALCOHOL AND HEALTH, by R. R. Spen-
cer, M.D. Senior Surgeon, U.S. Public Health
Service. Reprint from The Health Officer.
General points on temperance education.
Concerning Children
ILLEGITIMACY AND THE DAY NURS-
ERY, by Luna E. Kenney and Dorothy G.
Patterson. The First and Sunnyside Day
Nursery, 3627 Warren Street, Philadelphia.
A study covering five years of work on
"a problem which has gravely concerned
the workers who have compiled it."
A HANDBOOK ON CHILD CARE. The
East Harlem Nursing and Health Service,
454 East 122 Street, New York. 84 pp.
Price 50 cents.
A compilation of material, tested by
long experience, and approved by experts,
for the use of public health nurses and
others working with parents and children.
THE PUBLIC CHILD WELFARE PRO-
GRAM IN THE DISTRICT OF CO-
LUMBIA, by Emma O. Lundberg. Chil-
dren's Bureau Publication, No. 240, 18 pp.
Price 5 cents from the superintendent of
documents, Washington.
Straight from the shoulder discussion of
the "archaic laws and inadequate funds
which handicap child welfare in the na-
tional capital."
TELLING SCHOOL CHILDREN ABOUT
SOCIAL WORK. Community Chests and
Councils. Inc., 155 East 44 Street. 23 pp.
Price 50 cents.
A collection of material indicating ways
in which social -agencies may use their con-
tacts with the schools to further the social
education of children. Contains the address
given at the Indianapolis conference by
Carleton Washburne of Winnetka, 111.
YOU CAN'T HELP UNLESS YOU KNOW
HOW. American Red Cross, Washington,
D. C. 67 pp.
A collection of nine articles first pub-
lished in the Junior Red Cross Journal, de-
signed to give school children an intelligent
idea of some of the major areas of social
work.
HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF STATE
SERVICES FOR CHILDREN IN OHIO,
U.S. CHILDREN'S BUREAU PUBLICATION No.
239, PART I. Price 10 cents.
MATERNAL AND CHILD-HEALTH AND
CRIPPLED CHILDREN'S PROGRAMS
UNDER THE SOCIAL SECURITY ACT,
by Doris A. Murray, M.D. Reprinted from
the New England Journal of Medicine.
SUGGESTED METHODS OF IMPROV-
ING THE HEALTH OF THE AMERI-
CAN PEOPLE: THE PROGRAM OF THE
CHILDREN'S BUREAU, by Martha M. Eliot,
M.D. Reprinted from Minnesota Medicine.
THE HEALTH EDUCATION PROGRAM
OF THE CHILDREN'S BUREAU, with
PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO NEGROES, by
Katharine F. Lenroot. Reprinted from the
Journal of Negro Education.
INFANT AND MATERNAL MORTALITY
AMONG NEGROES, by Elizabeth C.
Tandy. Reprinted from the Journal of
Negro Education.
A group of reprints, from various pub-
lications, concerning the work of the U.S.
Children's Bureau. From the superintend-
ent of documents, Washington, D.C.
329
Readers Write
Deeply Felt
To THE EDITOR: Won't The Survey
please help a poor soul who is rapidly
acquiring an awful phobia. It might even
develop symptoms of snarling, biting
and ravening, if my environment is al-
lowed to press in any longer upon me
with its constant aggravation of my psy-
chic allergy.
I am fed up on hearing people say or
on reading that they "feel" what they
know, think, believe, conclude, deduce,
assume, are convinced of, opine, conjec-
ture or just plain guess, hope, wish or
desire, advocate, urge, recommend, have
some intuition or hunch about, have an
impulse to enunciate or shout, or other-
wise try to give expression or call atten-
tion to. It may well be that their use of
the term is in some degree accurate in
that their approach to their opinion has
been a groping emotional process but
then why not say that more picturesque-
ly— say that we have acquired our belief
or our urge to recommend by wrapping
our feelers about the subject and react-
ing like a gentle sea anemone — or a ra-
pacious, ink-spraying cuttle fish. Some
might vibrate to a subject like a violin.
If, however, we have arrived at a for-
mulation of opinion by any process that
has a grain of rational consideration in
it, that contains any element of observ-
ing, analyzing, concluding or in any other
way scientifically and intellectually ex-
amining and reporting on the subject, let
us preface that opinion with some word
other than that we "feel" it.
Please don't misunderstand me, I am
all for letting out on the emotional side,
as you can readily see by this letter, but
when it is done, it ought to be with a
whoop. "Feeling" an opinion or even a
reasoned conclusion is such an anaemic
emotional manifestation.
Yours for the immediate retirement of
"We feel that this is true."
"We feel that this should be done."
New York NEVA R. DEARDORFF
P. S. I've just found the loveliest word
in the dictionary. It is "rax," meaning
"to stretch out; reach; as, 'rax me your
hand' "! Dear Survey, rax me some other
words in the social work vocabulary —
but let them be good!
Three Centuries of Background
To THE EDITOR: New Haven people
have the chance just now — and are tak-
ing it — to see how social work has devel-
oped in the community through three
centuries. Much of the exhibit is in the
form of original documents or other orig-
inal material.
In preparation for the exhibit we
asked the various agencies to write the
histories of their organizations and
searched the library of the Historical So-
ciety, and the Yale Library and elsewhere
for appropriate historical material. Old
timers among the citizens were asked to
review their diaries and search their
attics for old documents, letters and pho-
tographs. Meantime a committee of lead-
ers in six fields of social activity was
formed to review available material and
to suggest additional sources for it. The
six fields were: family welfare, children's
work, medicine and hospitals, public
health nursing, mental hygiene, and rec-
reation. Finally, we turned loose the
Federal Writers' Project, and the Fed-
eral Art Project.
As a final result of all this we have
in glass show cases in our reception room
an exhibit of old documents and histori-
cal curios which pretty well illustrate the
long road we have traveled since the first
settlers moved in. Supplementing it are
nine large wall panels, contrasting old
methods with new and many lithographs
and etchings, old and new, as well as
lantern slides showing old situations and
methods which are used to illustrate the
twenty-minute addresses, one each on the
fields mentioned, that are a part of the
daily program.
The whole exhibit forms an impressive
background for the community chest cam-
paign. HOMER W. BORST
Secretary, Community Chest
New Haven, Conn.
New England Speaks
To THE EDITOR: Every time we have a
new application for old age assistance we
send out forms to each son or daughter
asking what contribution he or she can
make to the parent who has applied for
aid. Almost literally 100 percent reply
that absolutely nothing can be done.
Therefore the refreshment of spirit,
not to say excitement that occurs when
such an answer as this comes along:
"Receipt of this 'relatives report blank'
is truly a blow to my pride. I consider
it a pleasant duty and a privilege to sup-
port my father. I haven't any great
means, but I am willing and able to sup-
port him — have been doing so and intend
to continue.
"Application for this assistance was
made without my knowledge or consent.
And I might state that I do not approve
of this wholesale government assistance.
Government assistance in dire need and
suffering is one thing, but government
assistance where it tends to destroy op-
portunities for individuals to develop
their characters and cope with their own
problems is quite another thing.
"I believe this application has been
made with sincerity but based on mis-
understanding of the Old Age Pension
and Unemployment Pension Acts, [sic.]
My father has as much now as he ever
had: the government hasn't given him
any financial assistance in the sixty-five
years of his life. So why give it now any
more than at any other time?
"With the exception of myself, the sons
and daughters of this family are main-
taining their own homes and consequently
have their own responsibilities. They may
not contribute financially to my father's
support, except on special occasions, but
they contribute much that money could
never buy.
"So, as far as I can prove, you have an
application that should be cancelled until
I am incapacitated."
Perhaps the sturdy old New England
conscience isn't dead after all.
HERBERT E. FLEISCHNER
Agent, Board of Public Welfare,
Milton, Mass.
Why Not?
To THE EDITOR: Judging by Helen Man-
ahan's article, For the Good of the Cause,
in The Survey for July, dictation of case
records remains the bugaboo it was in my
own social work days. Miss Manahan
offers an ingenious outline to lessen the
horrors of "the allotted dictation period."
Any relief no doubt is welcome — but why
a dictation period at all, why not type
your own records?
It happens that I went from case work
into a school of journalism. In order to
enter the course in newspaper writing, I
had to learn typewriting, which I did at
night school while finishing my job. A
few weeks gave me sufficient speed and
accuracy to pass entrance examinations
and dash off my news stories in the allot-
ted time. It was not difficult; anyone can
learn to type. Newspaper reporters who
are required to type their copy seldom
"take a course," yet quickly develop sur-
prising speed and facility.
For years I have asked myself why
social agencies have not discovered the
obvious advantages of requiring their case
workers to type their own records. One
supervisor to whom I mentioned it
opined that case workers would feel it a
loss of dignity. Tell that to a newspaper
man! Journalists do not feel that their
professional standards suffer because of
their ability to pound the keys.
A certain amount of stenographic as-
sistance would of course be required by
most agencies. But with a fairly stable
staff and not too great a crush of work
to set the plan in motion, I can see no
objection that a reporter wouldn't squash
in short order. Why doesn't some agency,
or even some one case worker, try it?
I. R. A.
Social Worker-Journalist, California
330
THE SURVEY
Book Reviews
Southern Middletown
CASTE AND CLASS IN A SOUTHERN
TOWN, by John Dollard. Yale University
Press. 502 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
A PLAN to study the personalities of
** Negroes in the South by "getting a
few life histories that would show up the
manner in which the Negro person grows
up" was the start of this valuable volume
from the Yale Institute of Human Rela-
tions. The author, one of the institute's
best known research associates, soon
broadened his plan to a study of the caste
and class relationships as found in "an
average small town in a rural commu-
nity devoted to a staple crop and charac-
terized by a black belt history and psy-
chology." The similarity of the method
and technique employed by the authors
of Middletown is quite evident through-
out the book. The conclusions to which
Dr. Dollard comes and the social situa-
tions revealed might have been arrived at
by the common sense and ' the intuition
of a sensible and liberal southerner', but it
is well to have so many facts and the
well documented details of a trained
sociologist.
As might have been expected, the
author's task was difficult and delicate.
He confesses to certain hereditary and
personal prepossessions: a heritage from
abolitionists, a sociological bent of mind,
a personal sympathy for the underdog.
He sometimes felt like "the last of the
carpet baggers" as he encountered the
social and political prejudices of the
native whites. Choosing an office in a
building devoted to business rather than
the front porch .or back parlor of his
boarding house, he talked with some five
hundred people of all types over a period
of years, thereby seeing the situation in
all its concreteness. He impresses one as
fair, tolerant, objective — and eager to
arrive at the truth.
His distinctions between the middle
class whites and the "poor whites," be-
tween the upper or middle class and the
lower type Negroes, his representations
of the inter-reactions of these social types
and forces show a discriminating mind.
The whole range of economic, sexual,
religious and political relations comes
within the survey. One of the major gen-
eralizations is that caste has replaced
slavery. The author limits the field of
study to a most primitive community
rather than to metropolitan or industrial
centers, large and small, and constantly
calls attention to the differences. Nor
does he adopt a condescending attitude;
he admits, after giving a summary of the
caste and class patterns, that the emo-
tional situation described "could be re-
created in any part of the country, if
ample time were given and if the num-
bers of the two races were comparable
to those in Southerntown" — a point that
has been amply illustrated in northern
cities to which Negroes have gone in
large numbers in recent years.
There are many interesting human sto-
ries and anecdotes. Where there is so
much to praise, one hesitates to call
attention to minor defects; but for the
general reader, some of the terms em-
ployed, though they may have been adop-
ted by sociologists, sound like technical
jargon. A serious omission is the lack of
any reference to the work of the inter-
racial committees which have done so
much in recent years to remedy the evils
mentioned in the book.
In many ways the most significant par-
agraph in the volume is a statement of
the educational progress of the Negroes
in this backward community. Here is a
substantial fact: "Ten years ago educa-
tional tests were given to the Negro
teachers and it was found that more than
half of them tested around the fourth-
grade level. An energetic campaign to
raise the level of the teaching force was
instituted and today more than half of
the teachers are college graduates, a
quarter have had two years in college,
and most of the rest are highschool
graduates. It must be remembered that
this achievement represents the good will
and fairness of a southern white commu-
nity. Seven years ago there were twenty
thousand Negro children of school age of
whom five thousand were in school. The
average daily attendance was two thou-
sand. At the present time there are six-
teen thousand Negro children, twelve
thousand of whom are enrolled in school.
The average daily attendance is nine
thousand. This is a remarkable achieve-
ment attesting the tolerance and fore-
sightedness of the white people as well
as the zeal of the Negroes for educational
opportunities."
Vanderbilt University EDWARD MIMS
Where the Problems Lie
MORE SECURITY FOR OLD AGE, A REPORT
AND A PROGRAM, by Margaret Grant Schneider.
Twentieth Century Fund. 191 pp. Price $1.75
postpaid of The Survey.
A FACTUAL summary of foreign old
•^^ age insurance and pension plans and
of American experience with old age
security, prepared by Margaret Grant
Schneider, is combined here with a pro-
gram for action formulated by the Com-
mittee on Old Age Security of the Twen-
tieth Century Fund.
The program for action will give no
comfort to those who regard the old age
sections of the social security act as ade-
quate, even for the present. The old age
assistance sections, the committee finds,
should be considerably liberalized, both as
to residence requirements and as to appli-
cation of the means test. Further, ade-
quate old age insurance requires an
increase in coverage and an extension of
benefits to other types of risk, an earlier
date of beginning payments and more
liberal amounts in later years. Some of
the members of the committee feel that
in addition to the changes there should
be no increase in present taxes for a
period of years.
The committee recommends also that
accumulation of the relatively large re-
serve now contemplated be dispensed
with, pointing out that this would neces-
sarily occur if their other recommenda-
tions were adopted. The need for
stronger administrative agencies in the
states and the belief that superior admin-
istration may be achieved only by stronger
standards in the social security act itself
is pointed out.
The extraordinary range of the prob-
lems in this field, and the difficulty of
their solution, are well illustrated by the
fact that the committee, composed not of
theoreticians, "out of persons whose views
are intensely practical, appears to be in
disagreement on a number of fundamen-
tal points. A need for further analysis
is recognized.
The report serves adequately as an
introduction to the fundamental prob-
lems of a social security program and
ought to aid in the development of an
informed opinion, without which further
progress will not be possible.
MURRAY W. LATIMER
Washington, D. C.
Hazard of Words
HUMAN CONFLICT, A BIOLOGICAL INTERPRE-
TATION, by Trigant Burrow, M.D. Macmillan.
435 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The Survey.
HPHE author attempts an analytic
study of "the organism of man as a
totality" which, to him, means the con-
tinued expression of the phylum.
Through an experimental set-up, he en-
deavors to investigate human behavior in
a social setting, in order to afford an
opportunity for a physiological expres-
. sion of personality reaction. He regards
human conflict as having a social basis,
not so much in the conflict of a situation
as in the altered way of knowing it,
which is dependent upon a differential
connotation of language. The major diffi-
culties, therefore, are conflicts over
words and ideas, in which the word out-
look is distorted.
There is very little added here to Dr.
Burrow's well known theories concern-
ing phyloanalysis, although he endeavors
to present the principles in terms of
phylobiology and phylopathology. He lays
much stress upon the tensions of man
OCTOBER 1937
331
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
Announcing —
THE BOOK OF FESTIVALS
Dorothy Gladys Spicer
Foreword by Dr. John H. Finley
A source book for community workers on the festivals and folkways of thirty-five
nationalities including America.
Comprehensive and authentic data for use in the celebration of nationality holidays
and holy days and the interpretation of cultural backgrounds. #3
THE WOMANS PRESS
600 Lexington Avenue
New York, N. Y.
HANDICRAFTS OF THE SOUTHERN
HIGHLANDS— by Alien H. Eaton
While stressing handicrafts in the Southern Appalachians, this book also dis-
cusses their importance in the general rural field, in adult education, and in
recreation. "It is one of the most beautiful, if not the best, presentation of a
study of this sort I have ever seen." — Farm Journal.
370 pages
143 illustrations, 8 in color
$3.00
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
130 East 22d Street New York
before he had possession of language and
prior to his power of voluntary atten-
tion. Xo him behavior disorders, whether
individual or social, represent not an ex-
pret a single sentence in the light of com-
mon usage: "We have thus a partitive,
symbolic, extra-organic identity or be-
havior-ambit existing side by side
H. Kolb of the University of Wisconsin;
Regional Planning and Its Significance in
Cultural Determinism, by Howard W.
Odum of the University of North Caro-
lina; The Librarian and Adult Educa-
tion, by the late Edward S. Robinson of
Yale University; and The Adult Educa-
tion Program of the TVA, by Floyd
W. Reeves of the Tennessee Valley
Authority.
The Graduate Library School of the
University of Chicago has made a unique
contribution to the library of the future
and of the present in applying scientific
methods to surveying reading interests
and communities. Four papers included
in this book are by leading authorities in
this new field : People versus Print, by
Douglas Waples; The Evaluation of
Public Library Facilities, by Leon Car-
novsky; The New York Public Library
Survey, by Franklin F. Hopper; and
Methods and Techniques of Library
Surveys, by Edward A. Wight.
The development of various new tech-
niques in library services is described
by Harriet E. Howe of the University
of Denver, by B. Lamar Johnson of
Stephens College, by Paul Vanderbilt of
the Pennsylvania Museum of Art Li-
brary and by Robert C. Binkley of
Western Reserve University.
MARION HUMBLE
American Association for
Adult Education
Holiday Any Day
THE BOOK OF FESTIVALS, by Dorothy
Gladys Spicer, with foreword by John H. Fin-
ley. Woman's Press. 429 pp. Price $3 post-
paid of The Survey.
lllulvluual VI DWUCUj ICplCOClIL 11UL all u*v- llavlul -alllulL CJUVUllg MUl Uy OlUC _ /-vxry-l T I
ternal imbalance but one that is internal with a total, stereonomic, intra-organic l havje wanted exactly this book'
identity or behavior-ambit." Sentences Ust"« and accounting for the festi-
like this rob the volume of readability, vals and commemorative occasions of
regardless of whatever truth exists in the peoples a11 over the world' from our own
theory and its exposition.
New York IRA S. WILE, M.D.
and physiological. The real disorder is a
lack of coordination and peace that is
primary and internal to man. He reduces
his general investigations to a number of
specific indications, most of which are
not wholly supported by his own data.
The great difficulty is that his own spe-
cial nomenclature gives familiar words
unusual meanings while he creates new
words whose specific meanings are
manipulated in a manner that increases
the very hazard of words, of which he
complains.
His thesis is an interesting one; that
the ill health of man and the world are
due to the fundamental disturbances of
the internal motives of man as a species,
and that they arise primarily from the
conflict between definite neuromuscular
patterns of action. Hence, it is quite ob-
vious that a neurotic has no moral or
social responsibility for his disorder.
There is much that is repetitious in
this volume, and it fails to suggest the
practical application of a program to
recognize the species which, in the last
analysis, would be essential if man's ac-
tivities were a feeling response of racial
type. Perhaps the sum total of the diffi-
culty may be covered by trying to inter-
The Library's Long Arm
LIBRARY TRENDS. Papers presented before the
Library Institute at the University of Chicago,
August 1936; edited by Louis R. Wilson. Uni-
versity of Chicago Press. 388 pp. Price $2 post-
paid of The Survey.
Thanksgiving to the Chinese Ch'ing
Ming, Festival of Pure Brightness, or
Unabhangigkeitstag, Independence Day
of the Swiss; or Maulid, birthday of Mo-
hammed about the eleventh day of the
Third Moon Rabi 'Awwal. With it one
can find canonical excuse for idling on
virtually any day in the year; for it
looks as if the calendar were covered
TTHE wide range of interest in subjects from end to end- Paraphrasing the Sun-
1 considered by librarians and teachers shine Song— "It's a Feast Day Some-
of library science at the Graduate Li-
brary School of the University of Chi-
cago in the summer of 1936, is indicated
in twenty papers here assembled. It is an
essential textbook for every librarian and
student of modern library developments.
The significance of the institute, and
of this book, for students of social sci-
ences as well as for librarians, is in the
light thrown on general and educational
social changes and their relation to li-
brary activities of the future through
such contributions as :
Trends in Education, by Charles H.
Judd of the University of Chicago;
Library Service for Rural People, by J.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
332
Song — "It's a Feast Day
where All the Time." The author (offi-
cially Mrs. Gladys Spicer Fraser), whose
previous book, Folk Festivals and the
Foreign Community, affords background
for this one, has gathered an immense
amount of information, including ex-
planations of the Armenian, Chinese,
Gregorian, Hindu, Jewish, Julian and
Mohammedan calendars, and added a
useful bibliography and glossary. This
book will be most valuable for those for
whom it is especially designed : "librari-
ans, teachers, students, social workers,
festival and pageant directors, travelers,
writers," and those who wish to under-
stand "the festal heritage of different
'
peoples." Generally it embodies sociologi-
cal material of great value. The appre-
ciative foreword by John H. Finley, edi-
tor of the New York Times, nobly em-
phasizes its character as a catalogue of
the historic joys of all the peoples, and
especially of their contributions to Amer-
ica— a thing greatly needed in these days
of poisonous ultra-nationalism and stupid
race prejudice, rilling the world with sui-
cidal hatreds. JOHN PALMER GAVIT
Guide for Leaders
CREATIVE GROUP EDUCATION, by S. R.
Slavson. Association Press. 247 pp. Price
$2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
U'OR the leaders of group work among
children and young folks Mr. Slavson
has given in this book the most practical
help available. In purpose, content and
arrangement, it is practical and useful.
Theoretical considerations are inter-
spersed in descriptions of the author's
first hand experience in a variety of club
and classroom situations, and analyses of
typical occurrences and practices met in
settlements, centers, "Y's", camps and
schools. No effort is made to expound
theory as such. Rather the point of view
of the newer psychology is subsumed
throughout.
The book will be most useful to the
leader who wants to be progressive,
whether a new leader or an old one
changing his ways. It gives "leads" rather
than full directions: it starts the leader
rather than charts his course. It is there-
fore sketchy and not complete. Neverthe-
less it is without question sound in its
educational insight and practical tech-
niques. Mr. Slavson is one of a very
few who have the training in pedagogy,
psychiatry and psychology as well as
experience in group work that is essen-
tial for the writing of an authoritative
book of this kind.
The general thesis is that the aim of
group work is to develop interests, in-
itiate talents in the individual rather than
to emphasize "good" club programs. The
materials with which the leader deals
are primarily emotional conflicts and har-
monies, identification of the group mem-
bers with each other and interaction of
ideas. Group education does for the in-
dividual what family life should do:
establish relations of affection between
children and adults, give ego satisfactions,
give expression to the creative dynamic
drives, and engender emotions and estab-
lish attitudes that dispose to social use-
fulness and group participation.
The first five chapters deal with the
function of the group in personality de-
velopment and the ways in which the
leader can put the individual into inter-
acting relationship with others in a club
or class. In twelve brief following chap-
ters are sketched the fundamental (if
elemental) approaches to group work in
arts, crafts, music, dance, dramatics, writ-
In answering
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
Just Published —
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
SOCIAL STUDIES
By
Joseph K. Hart, Ph.D.
Associate in Educational Sociology,
Teachers College, Columbia University
'"T'HIS is a preliminary survey of the social world for the purpose of
A delineating the elementary structures of society, the more obvious forces
at work in organization and disorganization, the constructive ideals and efforts,
the more or less blind operation of forces, and the leaderships, both professional
and intellectual, that are, and will be, necessary if we are to get on toward those
levels of real understanding on which we can plan more wisely for the future."
"The real text of all social studies is society, itself: the social world, its groups,
communities, cities, institutions, changes and problems. This book is to be a
friendly guide, along certain rather well-marked trails, into that real and actual
world — of social living and social problems."
Excerpts from the preface.
£2.00
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
60 Fifth Avenue New York
New Americans in Allegheny County
by Mary E. Hurlbutt
This pamphlet, which is to be included in the forthcoming Columbia University
Press volume, Pittsburgh: Community Problems and Social Services of Thirteen
Hundred Thousand People, by Philip Klein and others, is published at a time
when the interest of social workers in the cultural and psychological background
of nationality groups is being increasingly aroused. The contents include
chapters on Case Work for the Foreign Born Family, Population Trends,
Nationality Communities, Citizenship Training, Naturalization, and The Program
of International Institutes.
114 pages 75c per copy
The Rank andFile Movement in Social Work
by Jacob Fisher
An authentic history of the Rank and File Movement from 1931-36. Contents
include chapters on Beginnings of Protective Organizations, Emergence oj
Practitioner Groups, The National Coordinating Committee, The American
Federation oj Labor, The Rank and File Movement and the Profession of
Social Work.
48 pages 20c per copy
Order from
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advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
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DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
Library Service
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 620
North Michigan Ave., Chicago. To aid in
the extension and improvement of library
service.
Child Welfare
BOYS' CLUBS OF AMERICA, INC., 181 Fourth
Avenne, N.Y.C. National service organization
of 291 Boys' Clubs located in 153 cities. Fur-
nishes program aids, literature, and educa-
tional publicity for promotion of Boys' Club
Movement ; field service to groups or individ-
uals interested in leisure-time leadership for
boys, specializing with the underprivileged.
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, 2 Park Avenue,
New York City. Incorporated in 1910 and
chartered by Congress in 1916 for the pur-
pose of developing the character of boys and
training them in their duties as citizens.
Cubbing, younger boys' program, 9-11 ;
Scouting, 12 and upward ; Senior Scouting,
15 years and up. Scouts are organized in
Patrols and Troops. Cooperates with schools
and churches, fraternal orders and other
civic groups. Walter W. Head, President ;
Dr. James E. West, Chief Scout Executive.
BERKSHIRE INDUSTRIAL FARM, Canaan,
New York. A national, non-sectarian farm
school for problem boys. Boys between 12
and 14 received through private surrender
or court commitment. Supported by agreed
payments from parents or other responsible
persons, in addition to voluntary contribu-
tions. For further information address Mr.
Harry H. Graham, Sup't., or the New York
Office at 101 Park Ave., Tel: LEx. 2-3147.
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA—
C. C. Carstens, director, 180 E. 22nd Street,
New York City. A league of children's agen-
cies and institutions to secure improved
standards and methods in their various fields
of work. It also co-operates with other chil-
dren's agencies, cities, states, churches, fra-
ternal orders and other civic groups to work
out worth-while results in phase of child
welfare in which they are interested.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSER-
IES—180 East 22nd Street, New York City.
To federate day nurseries in the U. S. and
assist them to establish and maintain ap-
proved standards of care.
NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE— 419
Fourth Ave., N.Y.C. Promotes child labor
legislation, state and federal ; conducts in-
vestigations ; advises on administration ;
maintains information service.
Community Chests
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS, INC.
— 166 East 44th Street, New York. Informa-
tion and consultation about cooperative plan-
ning and financing of social work through
chests and councils of social agencies.
Recreation
NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION—
316 Fourth Ave., New York City. To bring
to every boy and girl and citizen of America
an adequate opportunity for wholesome,
happy play and recreation.
Industrial Democracy
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY—
Promotes a better understanding of problems
of democracy in industry through its
pamphlet, research and lecture services and
organization of college and city groups. Ex-
ecutive Directors, Harry W. Laidler and
Norman Thomas, 112 East 19th Street, New
York Citj.
Health
AMERICAN MOUTH HEALTH ASSOCIATION
— Essex Building, Minneapolis, Minn. Hon.
Henrik Shipstead, President ; Jacob G.
Cohen, Secretary. Activities : — Promotes
mouth health teaching in the schools and
community organizations for mouth health
work ; offers suggestions and plans of pro-
cedure to public health officials. Publica-
tions. "Mouth Health Quarterly," $1.60;
"Mouth Health Library Series," free to
local groups interested in mouth help.
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL
HYGIENE, INC.— Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles,
president ; Dr. C. M. Hincks, general direc-
tor ; Clifford W. Beers, secretary ; 60 West
50th Street, New York City. Pamphlets on
mental hygiene, child guidance, mental
disease, mental defect, psychiatric social
work and other related topics. Catalogue of
publications sent on request. "Mental Hy-
giene," quarterly, $3.00 a year.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR PUBLIC
HEALTH NURSING— 60 W. 60th St., New
York. Dorothy Deming, R. N., Gen. Dir.
Advisory service, statistics, monthly maga-
zine.
NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION—
60 West 60th Street, New York, Dr. Kendall
Emerson, managing director. Pamphlets of
methods and program for the prevention of
tuberculosis. Publications sold and distributed
through state associations in every state.
American Review of Tuberculosis, medical
journal, $8.00 a year ; and Monthly Bulletin,
house organ, free.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE— A
Clearing House, cooperating with social work-
ers in referring indigent mothers to medically
directed birth control clinics in 41 states, in-
cluding 17 centers in Greater New York. In
areas lacking centers, qualified physicians are
available. Phone or write: 515 Madison
Avenue, New York City. WIckersham 2-8600.
President: Clarence Cook Little. Medical
Director: Eric M. Matsner, M.D.
New York City
THE BIRTH CONTROL CLINICAL RESEARCH
BUREAU, 17 West 16th Street ; MARGARET
SANGER, Director; has added evening ses-
sions, Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
from 7 to 9 P.M., for the benefit of mothers
who work and cannot come to the Clinic
daily from 9 to 4.
Penology
THE OSBORNE ASSOCIATION, INC., 114 East
80th Street, New York, N. Y. Telephone
CAledonia 6-9720-9721. Activities :— Collects
information about penal institutions and
works to improve standards of care in penal
institutions. Aids discharged prisoners in
their problems of readjustment by securing
employment and giving such other assistance
as they may require. Wm. B. Cox, Executive
Secretary.
DIRECTORY RATES
30 Cents a Line
Per Insertion
On a Twelve Time
Contract
Religious Organizations
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS—
106 East 22nd Street, New York City. The
Inter-Denominational body of 23 women's home
missions boards of the United States and Can-
ada uniting in program and financial respon-
sibility for enterprises which they agree to
carry cooperatively ; i.e. Christian social service
in Migrant labor camps and U. S. Indian
schools. President, Mrs. Millard L. Robinson ;
Executive Secretary, Edith E. Lowry ; Associate
Secretary, Charlotte M. Burnham ; Western
Field Secretary, Adela J. Ballard ; Migrant
Supervisor, Gulf to Great Lakes Area, Mrs.
Kenneth D. Miller.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN,
INC. — 1819 Broadway, New York City. Mrs.
Arthur Brin, President ; Mrs. Maurice L.
Goldman, Chairman Ex. Com. ; Mrs. Marion
M. Miller, Executive Director. Organization
of Jewish women initiating and developing
programs and activities in service for for-
eign born, peace, social legislation, adult
Jewish education, and social welfare. Con-
ducts bureau of international service. Serves
as clearing bureau for local affiliated groups
throughout the country.
NATIONAL BOARD, YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATIONS, 600 Lexington Ave.,
New York City. An international Christian
woman movement devoted to service for
women and girls and the attempt to help
build a society in which the abundant life
is possible for every individual.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS— 347 Madison
Avenue, New York City. Eskil C. Carlson,
President ; John E. Manley, General Secre-
tary. A federation of 1123 local associations,
through state and area councils, for Chris-
tian character education among youth. Meets
annually to determine service projects and
budget for cooperation with local member
organizations in program emphasis and in-
terpretation, fiscal operations, etc. Empha-
sizes lay-professional cooperation, group and
club activity, and self-governing programs
of physical, social and religious education,
public affairs, international education and
special cooperative projects, citizenship, etc.
Specialized work among transportation, army
and navy, student, colored, rural, and certain
other groups.
National Conferences
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL
WORK — Solomon Lowenstein, President, New
York; Howard R. Knight, Secretary, 82 N.
High St., Columbus, Ohio. The Conference is
an organization to discuss the principles of
humanitarian effort and to increase the
efficiency of social service agencies. Each
year it holds an annual meeting, publishes
in permanent form the Proceedings of the
meeting, and issues a quarterly Bulletin.
The sixty-fifth annual convention of the
Conference will be held in Seattle, Washing-
ton, June 26 - July 2, 1938. Proceedings
are sent free of charge to all members upon
payment of a membership fee of $5.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH
SOCIAL WELFARE— Harry L. Glucksman.
President; M. W. Beckelman, Secretary, 67
W. 47th St., New York, N. Y. Organized
to discuss Jewish life and welfare, Jewish
social service programs and programs of
social and economic welfare. The 1987
Annual Meeting will be held in Indianapolis,
Ind., May 20-23. The Conference publishes
a magazine, Jewish Social Service Quarterly,
a news bulletin, Jewish Conference, and Pro-
ceedings of its Annual Conference. Minimum
Annual Membership Fee $2.
Racial Adjustment
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., with its
44 branches improves social conditions of
Negroes seeking "not alms, but opportunity"
for them. Secures and trains social workers.
Investigates conditions of city life as bases
for practical work. Publishes OPPOR-
TUNITY, Journal of Negro Life. Solicits
gifts. 1133 Broadway. New York, N. Y.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
334
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
National Red Cross
THE AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS—
Administered through National Headquar-
ters in Washington, D. C.. and three Branch
Offices in San Francisco, St. Louis and
Washington, D. C. There are 3711 local
chapters organized mostly on a county basis.
Services of the Red Cross are: Disaster
Relief, Civilian Relief, First Aid and Life
Saving, Home and Farm Accident Preven-
tion Service, Home Hygiene and Care of the
Sick, Junior Red Cross, Nursing Service,
Nutrition Service, Public Health Nursing,
Volunteer Service and War Service.
Negro Education
TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, Tuskegee Institute,
Alabama. Founded by Booker T. Washing-
ton. High school and college both ac-
credited. Curricula designed to prepare
Negro students to meet the vocational and
social needs of successful living. F. D.
Patterson, President.
Why Not Celebrate
THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY
OF SURVEY ASSOCIATES
by listing your organization
in the Directory?
Copy for the
November Midmonthly
should reach us by
October 25th.
Foundations
AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND,
INC. — 16 West 16th Street, New York. A
national organization for research and field
service. Activities include : assistance to state
and local agencies in organizing activities
and promoting legislation ; research in legis-
lation, vocations, statistics, and mechanical
appliances for the blind ; maintenance of a
reference lending library. M. C. Migel, Presi-
dent ; Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION— For the Im-
provement of Living Conditions — Shelby M.
Harrison, Director; 180 E. 22nd St., New
York. Departments: Charity Organization,
Delinquency and Penology, Industrial Stu-
dies, Library, Recreation, Remedial Loans,
Social Work Interpretation, Social Work
Year Book, Statistics, Surveys. The publica-
tions of the Russell Sage Foundation offer
to the public in practical and inexpensive
form some of the most important results of
its work. Catalogue sent upon request.
ing, nature study, trips, parties, school
holidays, the gymnasium and the sum-
mer center. There is a treatment of
staff qualifications and of the educa-
tional consultant.
All of the work is apparently intellec-
tually honest, giving descriptions and
analyses of what actually occurred. It is
an excellent and timely book, written in
essence as a report of many experiments
by a leader with a decided but consistent
and enlightened point of view.
New York L/ERoy E. BOWMAN
The Problem of Syphilis
SHADOW ON THE LAND— SYPHILIS, by
Thomas Parran, M.D. Reynal and Hitchcock.
309 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
SYPHILIS— THE NEXT GREAT PLAGUE TO Go,
by Morris Fishbein, M.D. David McKay. 70
pp. Price $1 postpaid of The Survey.
A STRIKING example of the uni-
versal movement of our times which
brings human problems, long hidden, into
the open is Dr. Parran's new book,
Shadow on the Land. The fields of scien-
tific endeavor which the intelligent lay-
man now is able to contemplate by vir-
tue of "popular" works on science have
enlarged tremendously in the last twenty-
five years. Doctors, more than others,
with a commendable breadth of social
purpose, have laid before the ever-in-
creasing reading public, the facts and
problems that confront specialists in dif-
ferent fields of modern medicine.
Dr. Parran, as surgeon general of the
U. S. Public Health Service and for-
merly health commissioner of New York
State, has been a leader in the movement
to acquaint public health boards, prac-
tising physicians and citizens of our
country with the magnitude of the syph-
ilis problem in the United States. In a
concise and easily read volume, he cites
the enormous prevalence of syphilis (ten
to twelve million cases) and the intensity
of effort and vigilance that is required to
keep this plague from increasing. Dr.
Parran quotes the brilliant work of the
Scandinavians who, by their tireless
search for new sources of infection and
their compulsory treatment of cases of
syphilis, have reduced the number of
syphilitics almost miraculously. Thus, in
Norway in 1919, 360 new cases were
reported, while in 1933 only thirty new
cases occurred. Again, the annual rate
of early cases of syphilis in the white
population in the United States is 328 per
hundred thousand of population, while
there were twenty in Denmark and seven
in Sweden per hundred thousand.
Public health work of this type is pos-
sible only with the enlightened attitude
of the Scandinavian public, the persist-
ence of public and private physicians,
and the lack of moral censure which
has handicapped efforts to stamp out
syphilis among us.
Dr. Parran makes an impassioned plea
for a program that will eliminate syphilis.
This consists of vigorous campaigns to
ferret out all cases of untreated syphilis,
the use of public funds to treat every-
one adequately and the education of the
physician in syphilology and the public
in a scientific attitude towards this hith-
erto inenarrable plague. The book is
heartily recommended to everyone who
labors in the medical or welfare fields.
Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the
Journal of the American Medical Asso-
ciation, covers the same field as Dr. Par-
ran in a brief, outspoken brochure de-
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
335
signed for public consumption. It might
be noted that his subtitle, The Next
Great Plague to Go, was the title of an
article by Dr. Parran in Survey Graphic
for July 1936.
New York WALTER BROMBERC, M.D.
Housing Lessons
BRITISH AND AMERICAN HOUSING, by
Richard L. Reiss. National Public Housing
Conference. 112 pp. Price $1 cloth, 50 cents
paper, postpaid of The Survey.
TF American "housers" fail to learn
what British experience has to teach,
it will not be for lack of teachers. Here
is one of the most practical of the many
treatises on this subject. Based on his
quarter century of work for better hous-
ing and living conditions in England and
his recent lecture tour of the United
States, Captain Reiss presents a blend-
ing of data and advice which is at once
concise and comprehensive.
Captain Reiss finds that public housing
projects are carried out and administered
best by local rather than national au-
thorities. However, local authorities
cannot be relied upon to deal adequately
with the housing problem unless financial
assistance is provided from the national
government, unless some form of duty
is imposed upon them, and unless there is
an adequate public opinion demanding
that their powers be exercised. Public
housing in England, he holds, has not in-
terfered with private; it is confined to a
market which private initiative cannot
reach. If management is skilled, sym-
pathetic but firm, unsatisfactory tenants
will not exceed one family in twenty.
The author describes the PWA hous-
ing projects which he visited in the
United States a few months ago as "well-
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planned, both as regards the dwellings
and the layout on the site. The con-
struction was good and the provision for
amenities and communal life, in most
schemes, excellent." His main criticism
of the projects is that they are far too
costly. Why? Because:
The primary motive in starting the
projects was to provide employment
rather than low cost housing.
The fact that the projects were the
first ventures in public housing meant
that a new organization had to be set up,
involving greater costs than will be
necessary when organization has been
perfected.
Centralization of administration in
Washington of projects spread all over
the United States prevented economies
that might otherwise have been possible.
Direct federal administration led to an
attitude of mind that the projects should
be model ones, with not merely a model
plan, but also model equipment and ab-
solutely first class building.
The cost was further increased owing
to the federal subsidy being in a capital
rather than fixed annual form, and be-
ing proportional to the cost.
Most important, perhaps, of Captain
Reiss" recommendations is his insistence
on a long-term program. As he points
out, housing cannot be dealt with in two
or three years in America, any more
than it could under the British program.
New York HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM
Understanding Kansas
PEOPLE OF KANSAS, by Carroll D. Clark and
Roy L. Roberts, with foreword by William Al-
len White. Kansas State Planning Board. 272
pp. Price $2 postpaid from the board, National
Reserve Building, Topeka, Kansas.
men know Kansas as does Pro-
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY
336
fessor Clark, of the faculty of sociol-
ogy at Kansas University. One of the
state's real "promoters," he has looked
at its history from the many-angled vision
of a teacher who would give the coming
generation something of his own admira-
tion for the state's boundless possibilities.
Presumably his associate has given to the
demography which the book exhibits so
definitely, the same skill which Professor
Clark has exhibited for the sociological
aspects.
The whole book is thoughtfully exe-
cuted, the tables produced for their im-
portant contribution to the subject rather
than to give an official aspect or to follow
a routine. The sources from which Kan-
sas has gained her present virtues and
eccentricities are indicated distinctly in
this record of her history.
A concise volume, this is destined to be
of tremendous value in consideration of
the future of Kansas. It is peculiarly
appropriate that the Kansas Planning
Board should be the promulgator of this
graphic presentation of and for the people
of Kansas. CHARLES H. LERRIGO, M.D.
Topeka, Kan.
MIDMONTHLY
THE MIDMONTHLY SURVEY
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762 East 21 Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.
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Lucius R. EASTMAN, president; JULIAN W.
MACK, JOSEPH P. CHAMBERLAIN, JOHN PALMER
GAVIT, vice-presidents; ANN REED BRENNER, sec-
retary.
PAUL KELLOGG, editor.
MARY Ross, BEULAH AMIDON, ANN REED
BRENNER, JOHN PALMER GAVIT, LOULA D. LAS-
KER, FLORENCE LOEB KELLOGG, GERTRUDE
SPRINGER, VICTOR WEYBRIGHT, LEON WHIPPLE, as-
sociate editors; RUTH A. LERRIGO, HELEN CHAM-
BERLAIN, assistant editors.
EDWARD T. DEVINE, GRAHAM TAYLOR, HAVEN
EMERSON, M.D., JOANNA C. COLCORD, RUSSELL H.
KURTZ, HELEN CODY BAKER, contributing editors.
WALTER F. GRUENINGER, business manager;
MOLLIE CONDON, circulation manager; MARY R.
ANDERSON, advertising manager.
NOVEMBER 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 11
Frontispiece 338
Gains and Hopes for Health RUTH A. LERRIGO 339
Social Agency Boards and How to Serve on Them
1 — Why and Wherefore CLARENCE KING 342
100 Young Delinquents — and Why LISBETH PARROTT 344
Self-Help — Practical and Proved. . . UDO RALL 346
Farmers on Relief IRVING LORGE 348
The Common Welfare 350
The Social Front 352
Compensation • WPA-Relief • Public Assistance • The
Labor Front • Prison Congress • Old Age Insurance • The
Public's Health • Nurses and Nursing • Professional •
People and Things
Readers Write 362
Book Reviews 363
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• The more ignorant you are the easier it is
to be an anti. — H. G. WELLS in Survey
Graphic.
• At least it [the unemployment census]
will give everybody a new wrangling point.
— WALTER DAVENPORT in Collier's.
• Jews, Catholics and Protestants are for-
getting their respective roads to heaven in a
common attempt to escape hell. — NORMAN
THOMAS, New York.
• Democracy is not a dogma, nor even a
doctrine, but simply a doing. It is not a
product but a process. — Prof. T. V. SMITH,
University of Chicago.
• We have learned in America and elsewhere
to make and distribute propaganda faster
than we have learned how to resist and evalu-
ate it. — Prof. EDGAR DALE, Ohio State Uni-
versity.
• The biggest, tallest figure in the field of
social welfare will ever be the child. If we can
deal constructively with him the problems
of adult life will lose most of their terror. —
ROBERT W. KEJ.SO in The Science of Public
Welfare.
• The success of a conservative party seems
to me to depend on its acceptance of an un-
alterable, though possibly deplorable, change
in American life. No back to anything move-
ment will get anywhere. — D. W. BROGAN,
Oxford University in the Virginia Quarterly
Review.
• What folly that in a university, by defin-
nition an institution devoted to the full sweep
of the wisdom of earth, we should teach men
to raise better hogs and not to split infini-
tives, and so largely ignore teaching them to
create better characters and not to split one
another's throats. — N. B. DEXTER, Carlin-
ville, III., in The Christian Century.
So They Say
• All jails should be changed into hand-
spinning and hand-weaving institutions. —
GANDHI.
• Social workers do not make social change.
— JACOB FISHER to the Alumni of the New
York School of Social Work.
• There are sometimes people on boards of
education who are not enlightened. — PROF.
GEORGE D. STRAYER, Teachers College, Co-
lumbia University.
• The word charity has no place in modern
government. It is the duty of government to
take care of all citizens in need. — Mayor LA
GUARDIA, New York.
• A sound relief program can be built only
on a foundation of objective fact-finding and
tolerance, not on politics and complaints about
the present system. — Editorial in Christian
Science Monitor.
• Relief is being cut off in so many localities
it looks like feeding the unemployed is at an
end. From here on we just count 'em. I don't
know what it does for a jobless man to be
counted, but it must make him feel good to
have that much notice taken of him — CAL
TINNEY, news commentator.
• I hope to see the lines which the depres-
sion has placed on the faces of the business
and professional women of this country re-
placed with the upcurves of happy individ-
uals who have time for play as well as work
— EARLENE WHITE, president, National Fed-
eration of Business and Professional Women.
• German mothers must be glad to bear
sons whose destiny is to die in battle. — GEN-
ERAL GOERING, Nazi official.
• After all, in a revolution or rebellion the
winning side defines who the patriots are. —
PAUL MONROE in China: A Nation in Evolu-
tion.
• The dominant aim of our society seems to
be to middle-classify all its members. —
JOHN DOLLARD in Caste and Class in a
Southern Town.
• It is impossible to achieve universal jus-
tice, efficient administration and complete
coverage all at one stroke. — JOHN J. CORSON.
assistant executive director, Social Security
Board.
• If we attacked disease as unintelligently
and haphazardly as we attack crime, civilized
man would be wiped out in three generations.
— AUSTIN H. MACCORMICK, commissioner of
correction, New York.
• A good many of us should be fitted with
silencers, but you can't muzzle a scientist
with an inferiority complex. — DR. ARTHUR
T. McCoRMACK, Kentucky, president, Amer-
ican Public Health Association.
• About half a battleship a year, if intelli-
gently directed to the work of syphilis pre-
vention and control . . . would save the na-
tion almost as much in tax burden and blood
and agony as the last war cost. — DR. THOMAS
PARRAN, Surgeon-General.
• If a man has less than fifty shillings
[about $12.50] a week, life is so anxious
that he has no time for much thought con-
cerning high things; the strain of looking
after his body absorbs all his time and in-
terest.— HENRY WILSON, Bishop of Chelms-
ford, England.
DR. ARTHUR T. McCORMACK
State health commissioner of Kentucky
and secretary of the state medical
society, Dr. McCormack is this year's
president of the American Public
Health Association. Doctors, nurses,
health officers, sanitary engineers,
social workers, administrators of pub-
lic health agencies, mental hygienists,
educators — Dr. McCormack's new
constituency is a diverse group pulling
together for essential goals in health.
EVART G. ROUTZAHN
Tendered formal honors at the 1937
meeting of the APHA, Mr. Routzahn
was first chairman of the association's
public health education section and is
one of the editors of the American
Journal of Public Health. He is known
to social workers for his equally dis-
tinguished work, while associate
director of the department of surveys
and exhibits of the Russell Sage Foun-
dation, in developing techniques of
interpretation for the social services.
THE SURVEY
NOVEMBER 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 11
Gains and Hopes for Health
Leaders of the American Public Health Association urge teamwork
and wider public provision for medical and nursing care
By RUTH A. LERRIGO
IF the health of the American public is not yet all that
it should be, it is not because "nobody cares." The
sixty-sixth annual meeting of the American Public
Health Association brought together in New York early
in October a legion of health workers, rivalling in magni-
tude and infinite variety the assortment in the National
Conference of Social Work. There were more than five
thousand of them including health officers, physicians,
nurses, laboratory technicians, statisticians, sanitary engi-
neers, nutritionists, educators, mental and child hygienists,
epidemiologists, health-minded industrialists, dentists and
social workers.
But if diversity of specialty seemed the chief character-
istic of the convention-goers there were nevertheless con-
spicuous trends of interest and concern which secerned to
run through the meeting. At least, so it seemed to this
roving reporter, attempting single-handed (and, more im-
portant, only two-footed) to pick the high spots from
nearly a hundred meetings and three hundred formal
papers.
Perhaps the most meaningful trend was the emphasis on
coordination of all agencies working for health. The nutri-
tionists' assistance was invoked by the school and child
hygienists, public health nurses, dentists, health officials.
Mental hygienists were drawn in, at least by implication,
practically everywhere. The need for cooperation with
nursing forces was mentioned repeatedly in agencies con-
cerned with treatment. The dentists this year considered
formation of their own section within the association, but
decided instead to work in with other sections, wherever
appropriate. Dr. Thomas Parran, U.S. surgeon general and
retiring president of the APHA, speaking at a Silver Jubi-
lee dinner of the National Organization for Public Health
Nursing summed it up neatly:
The Children's Bureau used a provocative slogan in a con-
troversy some years back . . . pleading that we should not
"dismember the child," should not separate the care of his
health from the agencies which had to do with his welfare. . . .
We must make the citizen members and sometimes the doctors
in our public health team understand that the family health
program must not be dismembered by a continuity of special-
ists each attacking as separate problems school health, infant
welfare, tuberculosis, communicable disease, nutrition, bedside
care, and a dozen matters which are of importance to the
well-being of a family as a unit.
THE news core of the meeting, and the center of the
sub-surface stream of conference conversation, was the
recurrent call for wider public provision of nursing and
medical care. Only once before in the memory of the oldest
conference-goers has the socialization of medical care been
so much as mentioned at APHA meetings. Josephine Roche,
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, gave the association a
clear call for leadership.
A far step forward would be taken, I think, if the Ameri-
can Public Health Association formally recognized the prob-
lem of the present unequal distribution of medical services and
the widespread human needs of today, and charged a special
committee to cooperate with the U. S. Public Health Service
in extending through proper methods the long accepted func-
tions of public health work to meet modern demands and
"needs of our people.
When the APHA governing council got around to its
formal resolutions, it followed Miss Roche's lead and
formally resolved :
That a special committee of this association shall be ap-
pointed to study the public health aspects of medical care and
to cooperate with the United States Public Health Service
and other federal agencies represented in the President's Inter-
departmental Committee on Health and Welfare, and the
American Medical Association, the American Dental Asso-
ciation and other appropriate bodies in extending public health
work to meet modern needs, especially those occasioned by the
increasing importance of chronic diseases as causes of sickness
and death.
The council resolved further, in relation to the need for
more maternal care in childbirth, that :
Whereas many of the deaths of mothers from causes re-
339
lated to childbirth could be prevented if needed medical and
nursing care were available. . . . (the association) recommends
that sufficient sums be made available by the local, state and
federal governments to provide increased facilities for the
postgraduate education of physicians and nurses, consultation
service to local physicians, and hospitalization for mothers and
new-born infants when necessary, and to employ qualified local
physicians and nurses for all aspects of maternal care for
women who are unable to secure such service otherwise.
BY the time these resolutions were made public, Miss
Roche's lead had been echoed by other prominent
speakers. Dr. Livingston Farrand, former president of
Cornell University, predicted more tax supported medical
services and asked for the development of a flexible plan,
to be worked out by trial and error, by the cooperation of
the medical profession, public health agencies, hospitals,
social workers, nurses and other groups concerned. Sir
Arthur Newsholme, British public health authority, pointed
to the fact that "for several centuries in Britain there has
existed national provision for the general all-round medi-
cal treatment of those who cannot provide it for them-
selves"; and, referring to the British National Health In-
surance Act, "the doctors themselves would resent and
oppose proposals for the abolition of this communal medical
practice." Dr. Charles Goodrich, president of the Medical
Society of the State of New York urged members of the
association "to turn an icy shoulder" to "the very moderate
percentage of self-seeking, narrow-minded, thoroughly com-
mercial persons whose views are based on expectations of
dollars and cents return to themselves, not on the welfare
of the people." Governor Lehman of New York urged the
cooperation of public health officials, physicians and wel-
fare agencies to "achieve our goal of an equal opportunity
for health and adequate medical care" for all citizens, re-
gardless of circumstances or condition. Mayor La Guardia
of New York said of tax supported medical care, "We are
going to get more and it will be costly, but it is a good
investment."
Unquestionably there was great diversity of philosophies
within the association on this subject. A large audience
heard Dr. Arthur T. McCormack, state health commis-
sioner of Kentucky and incoming president of APHA, say
in his inaugural address: "We should oppose at all hazards
the socialization of medicine," and warn lest "any of the
social groups that would put their unhallowed hands upon
it" might win "a Pyrrhic victory," as a result of which
"the finer qualities that now characterize the physician
would soon disappear in the routine of the official." Dr.
McCormack called upon his audience to have confidence in
the medical profession, to "remember that they have always
lived up to their responsibility to the people of this country
and they always will," and to "be not impatient with their
progress." At the same time, he spoke of the importance of
increased federal assistance under the social security act,
"so that the states may improve the local administrations
of public health including maternal and child health,
through state-devised control, plans and policies" and "the
intention of this act that there shall be developed and main-
tained local full time public health service which will be
actually in touch with and in reach of the people them-
selves, in their lives and in their homes. . . . The American
people must decide" he said, "whether they want freedom
from syphilis and tuberculosis, a reduced deathrate from
cancer and pneumonia, less blindness and crippling and in-
creasing happiness and health in old age. ... If they de-
termine that they do, they must pay the cost, at a per
capita cost which is insignificant compared to the benefits
to be derived."
There were many evidences of increased awareness of
the need for treatment through public health agencies, as
well as for the more familiar services of prevention and
protection, particularly in controlling and combating pneu-
monia, syphilis and cancer through state health departments.
The call for well qualified personnel and for appoint-
ment and tenure on the basis of qualifications only, was
heard throughout the meeting. In the public health nursing
field particularly, the need for enlisting recruits of high
type was stressed. A resolution passed by the governing
council of the association urged all state and municipal
governments to recognize the principle of selecting public
health personnel solely upon professional qualifications and
to disassociate all political interference or control from the
administration of public health.
THE spread and growth of interest in nutrition is news
in the whole health field. Meetings of the section on
food and nutrition — once called food and drugs, and of
much more limited interest — drew large audiences, made
up of nurses, child hygienists, health officers, social workers,
dentists, as well as nutritionists. Much of the increased
interest in the subject is credited to the stimulus of social
security funds. Fifteen state health departments now have
established nutrition programs, through the titles concerned
with maternal and child care administered by the Children's
Bureau, as compared with three such state programs before
social security funds became available. Health officers now
are seeing the danger to the public health from under-
nourished disease-susceptible children, and more and more
are considering the remedy of that condition as a proper
function of the public agency.
Like nutrition, proper housing was a subject emphasized
in many meetings beside those labelled "housing." A sym-
posium on housing brought out for discussion the setting of
health standards for low cost dwellings, a study undertaken
a year ago and now under way by an APHA committee
on the hygiene of housing, Dr. C. E.-A. Winslow of Yale
University, chairman. The committee is cooperating with
the housing commission of the League of Nations. Its
membership includes experts in ventilation, lighting, plumb-
ing and sanitary engineering, a sociologist, and others
especially qualified. The committee plans to formulate not
only minimum health standards for low cost housing, but
also definite specifications to fulfill these standards, which
may be placed in the hands of builders. Answering a criti-
cism that the standards seemed too high to be attained in
really low cost housing, the committee contended staunchly
that its "feet are on the ground." One solution offered was
the grading of standards for housing, from the equivalent
of the nutritionists' "minimum subsistence diet" upwards to
better levels.
Rollo H. Britten, senior statistician of the U.S. Public
Health Service, looking at the magnitude of the job of
providing proper housing for this country, expressed his
belief that "health authorities must cooperate with organ-
ized labor in meeting this problem, because the persons who
are going to live in the houses are the ones most directly
concerned in furthering housing reform." Health officers
were urged to cooperate from the start in the new housing
programs, to ward against future difficulties by seeing that
new building construction is planned from the first to com-
340
THE SURVEY
ply with standards and specifications for healthful housing.
Just as public health nursing was prominent in related
programs throughout the conference, the nurses' own pro-
grams emphasized nutrition, psychiatry, social work, bet-
ter public health services. Dorothy Deming, general
director of NOPHN, speaking at a session to which the
public was invited, said that three outstanding goals of her
profession for the future were cooperation with other health
and social groups, bettering of the one-time goal of one
public health nurse to every two thousand of population
(a goal as yet unrealized) and, most of all, "We need
superior nurses."
First announcement of the results of a study by a com-
mittee on personnel practices in official agencies, as they
affect public health nursing, was made by Marian G. Ran-
dall, director of the study, "on loan" from the Milbank
Memorial Fund. With more than 2500 official agencies in
some 1400 communities of the United States employing well
over half of the country's public health nurses, current in-
formation on personnel practices in these agencies is of
first importance to nursing. Miss Randall gave advance
reports from her forthcoming book, Report on Personnel
Policies in Public Health Nursing. (To be published for
NOPHN by Macmillan, probably next month.)
CHILD hygienists turned their attention to the serious-
ness of the problems of stillbirth and of abortion in
the United States. Experts of the U.S. Children's Bureau
reported that although registration is incomplete, approxi-
mately 80,000 stillbirths are recorded each year. A special
study of stillbirths is now being made by the bureau to ob-
tain statistical information regarding fetal and maternal
conditions associated with stillbirth, in a quest for prevent-
able aspects as well as to improve statistical recording.
Dorothy G. Wiehl and Regine K. Stix of the Milbank
Memorial Fund reported that three recent studies con-
ducted by the fund, together with other evidence, indicate
that about 8 to 10 percent of all pregnancies are terminated
by spontaneous abortion ; that the frequency of illegally in-
duced abortions varies widely in different groups, and that
these variations, as seen in different income groups, point to
the importance of social and economic pressures as causes
of the resort to illegal abortion.
Educational and technical exhibits designed to inform
the public as well as professional health workers of the
major problems of chronic diseases and the fight to sup-
press them were on prominent display. Josephine Roche
told a general session of the conference that, whereas fifty
years ago 94 percent of all mortality from disease was from
acute illness, chiefly infections, chronic illness now is re-
sponsible for 75 percent of this class of mortalities. She
listed the ten diseases which take the greatest toll, in order
of the deathrates they produce, as: first heart disease, then
cancer, pneumonia and influenza, cerebral hemorrhage,
nephritis, tuberculosis, diabetes, diarrhea and enteritis,
appendicitis and syphilis. She forecast that the first accurate
picture of the needs of relief clients and the large group of
"medically indigent" will be seen, upon completion of the
U.S. Public Health Service survey of disabling illness and
the volume of medical services now being received. Pre-
liminary data show, she said, that:
. . . disabling illness of persons on relief is 68 percent higher
than among those in families with an annual income of $3000
or over; that the unemployed have twice the disabling illness
that the employed have ; the WPA workers have a disabling
illness rate 40 percent above that of other employed persons;
that one in every twenty heads of families on relief is unem-
ployed because of disability, while only one in two hundred
and fifty heads of families in the higher income groups is un-
employed because of disability.
i
NEW developments and studies, changed techniques
and currents of thought were reported in industrial
hygiene, public health engineering, laboratory and epidemi-
ologists sections, some of them of immediate interest, some
remote from the layman's concern. Means to greater ac-
curacy of tests and diagnoses, the constant quest for more
and more scientific exactness in the interest of the public's
health were objectives of these groups. Everywhere they
were ferreting out conditions menacing to health, and work-
ing on means to abolish them. Bacteria in the air of New
York, soot in the air of Pittsburgh, carelessness in restau-
rant cleanliness, new dangers in America's vacation habits,
were subjects which struck home to everyone.
Health education, in theory and in practice, was much
in evidence. An extensive display of health education and
publicity materials was maintained by Evart G. Routzahn,
chairman of the headquarters exhibit and editor of the
health education section of the Journal of the APHA.
Mr. Routzahn was given a "surprise" testimonial luncheon
honoring his work in this field and, specifically, his fifteen
years of service with the Association's Heath Section, of
which he was the first chairman. The governing council of
the APHA, in its formal resolutions, expressed its deep
appreciation of his "pioneer devotion in establishing tech-
niques of public information as an essential part of health
promotion and disease prevention."
The Committee on Scientific Exhibits of the association
gave six certificates of merit. Those recognized were: the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the Inter-
national Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation ;
the Isotype exhibition- technique, by Otto Neurath, president
of the International Foundation for Visual Education ; the
exhibit on the medical and public health building at the
New York World's Fair, 1939; the New York City Can-
cer Committee; the Union Health Department of British
Columbia, Canada ; and the American Medical Associa-
tion's exhibit of mechanical nostrums. The coming World's
Fair exhibit of medicine and public health was described
by Louis I. Dublin and Homer N. Calver as the probable
foundation for a permanent American Museum of Hygiene.
An interesting feature of the health education section was
a display of health movie "shorts," displayed hourly
throughout the meeting. The presentation was made largely
through the efforts of the New York State Department of
Health, in charge of Vincent Grogan of the bureau of
visual instruction.
Professor Abel Wolman of Johns Hopkins University
was chosen by the governing council as president-elect, to
take office at the 1938 meeting.
This year's meeting, shepherded by Mayor La Guardia
of New York as honorary chairman, and by City Health
Commissioner John L. Rice as general chairman, turned
out to be the largest in the APHA'S seventy-five years of
existence. But more significant than its size was the impact
on press, public and the various professions of health which
it appeared to make. Next year the membership, which is
drawn from all over the United States, from Canada and
Mexico, will gather in Kansas City again to check and
forecast gains, losses and hopes for health.
NOVEMBER 1937
341
SOCIAL AGENCY BOARDS AND HOW TO SERVE ON THEM
Why and Wherefore
By CLARENCE KING
New York School of Social Work
STARTING any new movement to promote a service
needed by the community but appreciated by only a
minority of citizens is like starting to roll a large
snowball. At the beginning the important thing is to get the
snow to pack — to mold the all-important central core. Once
you have cohesion at the center, once that inner ball begins
to attract other particles to itself, all you need is the right
slope and a sufficient expanse of snow and the ball will roll
on and grow.
Every new movement from Christianity to mental hy-
giene began with the building of a small, enthusiastic and
cohesive central group, welded together by an inspired
leader. Once cohesion and momentum had been achieved,
the original leader might withdraw but the movement
rolled on. The board of directors in any movement should
be this core of enthusiasm and vigilance. No new social
invention, no broad stroke of official action, can be substi-
tuted for it.
Years ago a dentist in a New England city conceived the
idea that the teeth of school children should be cleaned at
municipal expense by dental hygienists especially trained
for the purpose. He did not go through the slow process
of organizing a dental hygiene association to promote the
idea. Instead he went straight to the source of political
power, the city boss. He convinced the boss of the soundness
of the idea and that, "It would be good politics not to play
politics with it." Dental hygiene was introduced into the
schools and flourished. The system was copied in other
cities here and abroad. But in a few years that boss died
and without an organized, convinced group of citizens to
stand behind it the movement for dental hygiene was
emasculated in the city which gave it birth.
Compare this with the development of public recreation
in the same city. During the war a recreation association
was formed, and an influential enthusiastic board organ-
ized. At first the movement was supported by private con-
tributions. The snowball of increasing interest rolled stead-
ily on until the new enterprise was adopted as a function of
the municipal government with the members of the un-
official board named as the official recreation commission.
The depression of 1921 brought reaction. New city officials,
pledged to cut expenses and regarding this new function
of city government as a "frill," eliminated it from the city
budget. But they had not reckoned with the board. Mili-
tant, influential, convinced of the soundness of the enter-
prise, it stood its ground and so stirred public sentiment
that the authorities were forced to restore the appropria-
tion. Since then public recreation has continued as a perma-
nent function of the municipal government of that city.
There is real danger of indulging in wishful thinking and
of substituting a picture of an ideal board for a realistic
view of boards as they actually exist today. Truth compels
us to admit that only a minority of boards, in either public
or private social work, constitute a cohesive and dynamic
force. This does not prove, however, that boards have been
overrated as an effective administrative device. It merely
indicates that these boards have not been energized into the
constructive force which they can become if well organized
and led.
So long as a social movement remains unofficial, the
board as a necessary device for providing sponsorship is un-
debatable. When a movement ultimately obtains official
sponsorship and is incorporated as a government depart-
ment, there are differences of opinion as to the advantages
of continuing the board.
Out of the long history of privately developed social
work certain definite advantages of board backing stand out
so clearly that they are not to be dismissed lightly by any
social agency, dependent, as all of them are, on community
understanding and support. It will be enough here to dis-
cuss eight of the chief uses of boards, though more will
suggest themselves.
INTERPRETING THE WORK TO THE PUBLIC: A men's
club was discussing around the luncheon table the philan-
thropies of a certain townsman. Said a manufacturer, "The
community chest shouldn't solicit Brown. He takes care
of six dependent families out of his own 'pocket." "That's
right," said a merchant, "Brown does enough in his own
quiet way." There were several expressions of agreement.
Then a conservative lawyer spoke up. "I don't know
whether Brown should be exempted or be given a good
swift kick." All present were shocked into close attention
to the lawyer's informed discussion of the value of skilled
service in administering relief and the dangers of well
meant but promiscuous philanthropy. When he had finished,
there was no dissent. Where did he get his information?
From the local family society where, as a member of the
board, he had become convinced that philanthropy without
skill may do more harm than good. By seizing an oppor-
tunity afforded by casual conversation, he had spread his
own conviction among some of the most influential leaders
of his community.
All the devices of formal publicity technique may be in-
voked by a private society or a public department that can
afford them, but it is doubtful whether any of them will
prove as effective in interpreting the work to the public
as the informal unplanned efforts of a board and its mem-
bers who are really representative of the public. Unfor-
tunately few boards are energized to make conscious and
continuous use of the influence they possess. They are un-
aware of its importance. In some instances a special com-
mittee on publicity and interpretation may help to keep the
whole board energized in this regard, again it may be a
staff member skilled in publicity, who will urge the im-
portance of board member interpretation in season and out.
GIVING SPONSORSHIP AND PRESTIGE: One of the obvious
uses of boards is to sponsor the work ; to give it prestige ;
perhaps even to make it fashionable. This is highly impor-
tant for a new movement seeking community acceptance
although a following attracted only by influence is no sub-
stitute for one with real understanding. It is a fact that a
movement can gain standing just because an influential
342
THE SURVEY
citizen takes the leadership of it. Thus in a medium-sized
city the new community chest limped along unsuccessfully
for two years. The president was a man of slight prestige,
financially and socially. Important names appeared on an
honorary committee but not on the board responsible for
active direction of the work. To the town this indicated
that the movement had not yet arrived. Then one day one
of the most influential and popular men in the city agreed
to accept the presidency. Almost from that day the chest
was on a different footing in community esteem and there-
after was markedly successful.
The situation in that city might be illustrated by a pyra-
mid, with the president at its apex. The position of the
first president in the community was not very exalted and
the pyramid of his influence therefore had a narrow base.
The second president raised the apex of the pyramid of in-
fluence so high that its sides sloped out to reach nearly the
entire community. Thus the organization, by the simple de-
vice of raising the apex of its leadership, immediately broad-
ened the base of its support. An ideal board from the stand-
point of prestige would include a leader from every im-
portant group in town. Thus collectively their various
pyramids of influence would reach the whole community.
RAISING MONEY OR INFLUENCING APPROPRIATIONS:
Raising money is not the chief reason for a board. Success-
ful financing depends far more upon interpreting the work
to the community than upon the individual gifts of board
members themselves. For this reason it should not be as-
sumed that when the work begins to be supported by tax
funds a board is no longer necessary. Adequate public
appropriations do not come without interpretation and pub-
lic confidence. When a public welfare agency presents its
financial needs to an appropriating body the weight of an
influential board backing up its proposed budget frequently
proves more effective than the clearest logic or the most
compelling statistics. Even from the standpoint of securing
private contributions, the policy of electing board members
and asking nothing of them but their gifts is ineffective and
shortsighted. Neither intelligent enthusiasm nor large gifts
will result long from such a policy.
INTERPRETING THE COMMUNITY TO THE STAFF:
Here a board is indispensable. Harold J. Laski, writing
on the limitations of the expert, explains the biased point of
view which results from specialization and discusses the
need for someone to mediate between the expert and the
general public. A board representative of the community
takes up that slack for a social agency. At the same time
it affords the executive a testing place for his ideas. He
quickly will learn from his board whether he is proceeding
faster than the community is prepared to follow. This need
not mean that the board is only an inhibiting force. The
board should be a step ahead of the community, fully aware
of its attitudes and adroit in meeting them. Thus the presi-
dent of a central labor council serving on the board of a
community chest was able not only to explain the bitter
opposition of organized labor to the chest but to devise
ways to overcome it.
In England the British genius for democratic government
is displayed in the general use of citizen committees to re-
flect local opinion. In the administration of non-contributory
old age pensions, every community of 20,000 or more has
a local committee although the entire expense is paid by
the national government. These committees hear appeals
from decisions of the local pension officer and have power
to determine questions of fact.
CHOOSING, SUPERVISING OR REMOVING THE EXECUTIVE:
One of the chief duties of a board, unless it is merely ad-
. visory, is to choose its executive officer. After his selection
the board stands sponsor for the quality of his performance.
If his work is not satisfactory, it is the board's responsibility
to take necessary action, even to the point of removing him.
The task of choosing, supervising and removing the execu-
tive will be discussed in detail later in this series.
. MAKING POLICY DECISIONS: This frequently is regarded
as the chief task of the board. These decisions may be as
simple as choosing new office space or as difficult as de-
termining an adequate weekly relief budget for a large
family in need of special medical service. As social work
becomes more complex and scientific, debate arises as to the
capacity of a lay board to determine policies which require
expert knowledge. If the board has a skilled staff, should
not the experts make such decisions? But if these decisions
are to be made by the experts what is the use of a board?
In English local administration, the position of the board
or functional committee in reference to expert policy de-
cisions is clearly established. The executive, generally a
career man with special training, serves as an expert ad-
viser while the proposed policy is under discussion. The
committee takes full responsibility before the public for the
decision reached, the executive accepts it and thereafter be-
comes the agent of the committee to carry it out. Public
disapproval might force resignation of some of the com-
mittee but the executive would not be held responsible for
the policy in question even though he advised it.
We have no such clear distinction in this country. When
a partisan, aldermanic investigation of the Emergency
Relief Bureau in New York City succeeded in making
"boondoggling" seem ridiculous to the general public, it
was the director of the bureau who resigned. The public
hardly knew that there was an Emergency Relief Board
and none of these board members felt called upon to resign
though presumably they had approved the challenged poli-
cies. A sound rule would seem to be that all boards that
establish policies should assume responsibility for them.
Centralization of responsibility is much simpler under
the English system of local government. There the public
assistance committee is composed of party representatives in
the same proportion as in the city council. Thus the domi-
nant part is at all times in control. Our effort, however, is
to have administrative boards strictly non-partisan with
long, overlapping terms so that no single elected city head
can control them. This frequently is offered as an argument
against administrative boards because responsibility can be
centered neither in one executive nor in one party.
The answer is clear if we remember that on major poli-
cies neither the executive nor his board makes the final
decision. In the last analysis the community, the voters or
THE SURVEY is indebted to Harper and Brothers as
well as to the author for the privilege of offering to its
readers a series of four articles drawn from Mr. King's
book, Social Agency Boards and How to Serve on Them,
to be published by Harper early in the new year.
Articles to follow this first one are: In a Changing
Scene, The Necessary Executive, and Community Roots.
NOVEMBER 1937
343
contributors, decides because it puts up the money. The de-
cision may be slow, but it is sure. Here the board has an
expertness in appraising community temper seldom possessed
by the most skilled staff. It knows how the community
feels. If it is really representative it can outline, better than
anyone else, the steps by which the community temper may
be modified to accept new policies advised by experts.
Certain social workers make small effort to share infor-
mation about complicated social work practices with their
boards on the theory, it seems, that the boards, lacking
professional background, "would not understand." In that
critical hour which may come to any social agency when it
can go forward only if influential laymen do "understand,"
such workers will find themselves lacking the support of
those who should be their strongest backers.
STARTING NEW MOVEMENTS: The impetus to set going
a new social or civic movement usually comes from a small
group of people whose conviction moves them to action.
Later the members of such a group may elect a board, but
at the outset it generally works the other way — the original
group is the board until the movement has gained enough
adherents to permit a wider base of selection. An example
of this is offered by a mental hygiene society formed in 1925
in a small city. It began with only seven persons who con-
stituted themselves a board and set out to get members for
the proposed society. It was more than a year before the
whole membership came together in an annual meeting offi-
cially to elect a board.
Many new movements in social work started as offshoots
of an established agency which sponsors the development
through a committee of its own board until the new effort
is strong enough to stand before the public on its own feet.
Thus the movement for joint lay and professional effort
for the prevention of tuberculosis received a most signifi-
cant stimulus if not a chronological beginning through a
special committee of the New York Charity Organization
Society. The board of that established agency knew keenly
the need for such an effort, some of its members were
stirred deeply by it. Thus the society gave its prestige and
certain of the board members their individual drive to a
movement that soon grew to national proportions.
GIVING CONTINUITY TO THE WORK: "A board," says
Francis McLean, "is the continuing stream of the life of
a society. The board continues in the eyes of the public as
trustees for the work. It is the visible sign of the com-
munity's endorsement of a project."
It is in this area of a board's service that its various other
aspects of usefulness come together. Executive and staff
may come and go, public opinion may fluctuate, conditions
may change, but the work goes on and it is for the work
itself that the board is responsible. Service, standards of per-
formance, flexibility and growth should not be dependent
on the enthusiasm, the drive or the backing of a single per-
son. This is just as true, perhaps even more so, of a public-
agency as of a private. The enactment of a law may create
a needed and useful welfare service, a political boss may
give it his blessing, but that is no guarantee that the service
will be effective or will continue to function if opposing
forces get control or the boss passes out of the picture. At
such a juncture it is the board, convinced and convincing,
that serves as guardian of the public interest and protects
the service against emasculation or even destruction.
100 Young Delinquents— and Why
By LISBETH PARROTT
WHY does not juvenile delinquency dwindle and
die away, but instead continues to flourish and
grow strong?
Seeking an answer to that vexing question, Jacksonville,
Fla. through its Council of Social Agencies had the cour-
age to make a searching self-analysis. At the instance of the
Blue Ridge Institute for Social Work Executives, which
wanted some laboratory material for a study of delinquency
prevention, Jacksonville volunteered to be the guinea pig.
During 1936-37 the council conducted a survey of a hun-
dred juvenile delinquents, their families and their com-
munity setting. The efforts of a full time research staff,
in consultation with the Community Chests and Councils,
Inc., produced an almost photographic picture of the cases
studied. But more than that — and this feature is believed
to be unique among such studies — the picture of the young
delinquents themselves is framed by a detailed report of
the services which local social agencies have given them.
Seen together, these findings portray a fairly conclusive
answer to the question which launched the whole study.
The facts revealed about the boys and girls and their fam-
ilies involved in delinquency cases are moving enough ; but
the most stirring picture, to the social worker at least, is
that of the lack of coordination of services and focus of
piogram in an American city that may be regarded as
fairly typical. Here we have a picture of each social agency
busy at its own appointed task, going its own separate way,
the right hand unaware of the left hand.
Subjects of the Jacksonville study were a hundred juven-
ile delinquents who had been committed to state training
schools from Duval County. Starting at the end of 1936
and going backwards, this meant that all the children com-
mitted in 1936 were included, with a few committed at
the close of 1935. Of the hundred, thirty-one were white
boys, twenty-three white girls, and forty-six Negro boys.
As there are no institutional facilities for Negro girls,
none was included in the study. Most of the young delin-
quents were from twelve to seventeen years old, but four
were under ten years. Nearly all were of native stock.
In natural endowments and economic and social privi-
lege, the study revealed, most of the children had been woe-
fully short-changed. Reports obtainable on the intelligence
of seventy-three showed that 44 percent had I.Q.'s below
70. Only fourteen fell in the 90-100 classification regarded
as average for school children. Three were "bright" — their
I.Q.'s over 110. Investigators said that "even on the sur-
face there are many indications of emotional disturbance
among the children and their families which seem to call
for skilled treatment in mental hygiene."
In school the children were markedly retarded, but only
344
THE SURVEY
eight had been enrolled in special classes. Fifty-three had
been truants, but there were no attendance officers to find
out why. A surprising bareness of recreational life was re-
vealed. Only eighteen children had ever belonged to any of
the organized programs for young people's activities. Many
of their families did not know how they spent their leisure
time. Mothers reported that they were usually "running
around the streets."
In spite of their youthfulness, the majority of the children
had been in gainful employment. (One had been giving
"spiritual readings.") Health problems abounded; some
had syphilis and gonorrhea, others had equally serious ail-
ments. Nearly half had diseased tonsils.
THE Jacksonville group focussed its attention on the
families and homes of the children, rather than upon
the children. Nearly all the families were in serious eco-
nomic straits. Fifty-nine of them were living on in-
comes below minimum needs, as defined in the FERA's
Weekly Budget on Restricted Diet; twenty-four were liv-
ing at the level of this budget; only eleven were "com-
fortable." In a large number of families children had been
kept out of school for varying periods of time because of
lack of clothing and other essentials.
Sixty-five mothers of the ninety-two about whom such
information was available had been regularly employed
over a long period of time, almost all at very low-paying
jobs, so that it was impossible for them to hire anyone to
look after the children while they were away. Interviewers
for the survey often heard the remark, "This wouldn't have
happened if I had been at home with the children."
Fourteen families were intact so far as both parents went
but in only five was there no outward evidence of family
disharmony. All the other homes were broken by desertion,
divorce, death. Seven children were illegitimate.
Housing in a majority of the cases was inadequate, par-
ticularly so for most of the Negro families. Sixty-two per-
cent of the children lived in the "underprivileged area," a
section where dependency, morbidity, mortality, and delin-
quency rates were higher than the average for the city.
Forty-seven of the families were known to have official
criminal records for one or more of their members. Re-
searchers believed that this rate would have been higher
had complete information been available. Other types of
recorded misconduct throw light upon family relationships;
for example, twenty-six parents had deserted their families
at one time or another ; thirteen fathers had been markedly
cruel to their wives and children.
Many serious health problems were found among the
families : twenty-eight cases of syphilis, three of gonorrhea ;
eleven of undernourishment and anemia; six of severe car-
diac disorders; five of tuberculosis. Ten of the children's
parents had been committed to institutions for the insane,
and six of their brothers and sisters to institutions for men-
tal defectives. And even at that, workers were convinced
that there were other cases unreported.
Having learned something about the problems in these
homes, Jacksonville next wanted to know: What chance
have the social agencies had to do something abut them ?
In the first place, it was learned that 88 percent of the
families were known to the agencies; most of them to sev-
eral. These agencies represented a variety of services: fam-
ily and child welfare, health, group work, and so on.
Since it is generally agreed that an early start is im-
portant in working with a child, particularly an under-
privileged child, it is interesting to note that in a large
number of these cases the agencies did start early. They
began work with forty-six of the families when the future
delinquent was less than ten years old ; yet all but thirteen
of the children were over twelve when committed. In two
instances, fifteen years had elapsed from the time of the
family's first contact with a social agency until the child's
committment; in thirty-five cases, five or more years had
passed ; in sixty-three, two or more.
Although the problems in these families were so numer-
ous and so serious, they were not usually recognized by the
agencies in their first year of contact. Economic need, medi-
cal problems, the obvious fact that one or both parents were
not present, made up the bulk of the problems recorded in
the first year's diagnosis, this in spite of the domestic diffi-
culties, immorality, mental disease and deficiency and other
such problems which seem to have existed in high degree.
Where the family had contact with more than one agency
during the first year, one agency frequently was unaware of
problems diagnosed by another.
Delinquency is mentioned in the records of forty of
these families — but since in the end there were delinquent
children in all of them, it is obvious that in many cases, in
spite of repeated appearances of the child in court during
the time of the agency contact, delinquency was not recog-
nized by the agency.
A GOOD many services and facilities generally re-
garded as important in a community are non-existent
in Jacksonville or are available only to a very limited extent.
Grants for relief are inadequate, being usually 25 to 50
percent of a family's budgetary need, depending on the
money available. Mothers' aid cases at the time of the study
were getting $5 per child per school month, and less or
sometimes nothing during vacations. No assistance of this
kind was available for colored children. There is no fam-
ily case work agency; the need for relief was the determin-
ing factor in the opening and closing of cases. There was
some foster home work, but not enough to meet the need.
Neither the agencies nor the courts have psychiatric or
psycholgical services; the schools have one full time but
overworked psychologist, no visiting teachers, no attendance
officers. Bedside nursing, clinic and hospital facilities and
medical social services fall short of the community needs.
Playgrounds are far too few; there is none within walking
distance of the most spotted delinquency area. Group work
programs are limited by funds and facilities.
The juvenile court is recognized as one of the best in
the South, but it has no authority over its probation de-
partment. There is no merit system for probation appoint-
ments, which are made by the governor. Reports to the
judge usually consist of unverified face sheet data. The pro-
bation division does not clear or register its cases with the
social service exchange. Probation is usually limited to
routine reporting once or twice a week.
Other cities may suffer from inadequate facilities in the
same degree as Jacksonville ; some are undoubtedly more
blessed, some even less well off. At any rate, after studying
Jacksonville's self-analysis, the Blue Ridge Institute com-
mittees concluded that filling in the gaps will not be suffi-
cient to meet the situation. Changes in organization and
procedure are needed to bring about a real coordination
of the specialized services into a total community plan
which will not only treat problems as they arise here and
there, but will be geared to detect and to prevent them.
NOVEMBER 1937
345
Discovery of problems at an early stage, the Blue Ridge
discussants reiterated, is just as important a part of the
community program as investigation and diagnosis. In be-
havior problems as in public health, as the beginning of a
preventive program, responsibility for discovery of cases
needs to be fixed and methods of case finding worked out.
In pointing out the need for early diagnosis, the committees
observed that agencies often spend their time and resources
in treating end results, when it would be less costly and
more fruitful to find problems in their incipient stages.
Furthermore, they went on, most of these Jacksonville
families need long time treatment. Cases should not be
closed when relief is no longer needed and reopened when
a husband is sent to prison; closed when syphilis treatment
is finished with a mother, reopened when the disease appears
in a child.
As more than half of the families came to the attention
of an agency after the normal family relationship had been
disrupted, the Blue Ridge committees observed that : "so-
cial problems become agency cases only after the situation
is severe enough to have a nuisance value, causing the
client to apply for service or someone to refer him to an
agency. The data show that, even then, the application is
for the most part in terms of obvious needs such as eco-
nomic assistance, medical treatment, or care for children."
The individualized agencies, the institute concluded, need
to think of themselves not as completely segregated units,
but as parts of a whole community system, with dispatch-
ing, signalling and operating units. Under such a plan, the
headlong flight of children into the juvenile courts and
training schools, and later into the adult prisons, might be
checked before it had even started to gain momentum.
Self-Help, Practical and Proved
By UDO RALL
Former director, Division of Self-Help Cooperatives, Federal Emergency Relief Administration
* • 'SHE self-help program of the FERA which burgeoned
so hopefully at one time is now a thing of the past.
•*- Although it averaged better results, dollar-for-dollar,
than any other federal relief expenditure its significance lies
less perhaps in that fact than in the evidence it offered of
what the cooperative self-help technique holds for marginal
and submarginal income groups. This evidence can be
presented most clearly I believe by means of specific illustra-
tions of where self-help has worked effectively and is con-
tinuing to work, through methods which could be em-
ployed in many places and under various conditions. These
illustrations might be multiplied, but three will be enough.
They are : low cost housing requiring no subsidy, extension
of the purchasing power of old age pensioners, the spare
time production of food for home consumption by low in-
come families.
A small self-help cooperative in the little rural com-
munity of lona, Idaho, on analyzing the needs of its mem-
ber families, found that their greatest lack was adequate
housing. Most of the members had part time employment
or were on relief and managed somehow to get necessary-
food, fuel and clothing. Many of them owned small plots
of cheap land acquired before the depression but since
they could not hope to save enough money to build, and
could pay no more than $10 or $15 a month rent, they
seemed doomed to tenancy in neglected shacks.
At that time the self-help division of the state ERA had
a modest revolving fund from FERA available for self-
help projects and to that office the group appealed for ad-
vice and assistance in tackling their housing problem. By
a cooperative procedure ultimately worked out, seventeen
families so far have obtained or, in a few instances, im-
proved their own homes.
The state office provided standard plans for basement
dwellings which could be constructed almost entirely by
unskilled labor. Typically these dwellings consist of a
waterproof concrete floor and outer walls enclosing four
rooms equipped with modest plumbing and heating facili-
ties. The walls project several feet above ground to permit
the necessary windows. The roof, flat or pitched, can be
raised when the owner is ready to complete the house with
a superstructure. The entire cost of materials for the house
runs under $300. A report by the group briefly describes
the cooperative procedure:
A man must first own a lot on which he proposes to build.
He makes application to the cooperative for both the cash and
the labor needed for his proposed construction or improvement,
specifying in the application the repayment terms he can meet.
If the application is approved by the executive committee and
the state director, the applicant deeds his lot to the cooperative
as security. The cooperative as a whole borrows from its own
grant fund [the FERA revolving fund mentioned above]
sufficient cash to purchase the necessary materials, at the same
time giving to the state self-help department an agreement to
pay back to the grant fund the advance which it has received
according to the same terms as those specified in the agree-
ment between the cooperative and the applicant. The labor
for the construction is provided through an exchange of
services by different members of the cooperative -wishing to
build. The contracts for repayment of the cash advances
specify a monthly repayment rate, in most cases less than the
cash rentals which families have been paying, and in all cases
providing for paying back the entire sum in a twenty-four
months' period. In this way our building fund is kept intact and
can be made over a period of years to serve many families.
Each builder pays back to the cooperative 10 percent more in
cash than it has borrowed on his behalf, to offset necessary
cash expenses of the organization. Our people are modest in
their demands and in several cases have borrowed from $200
to $300 for materials to construct a basement and are living
in the basement until it is paid for, hoping to procure the same
assistance for the superstructure after the basement has been
paid out.
The state reports that payments are being made regu-
larly and that several families have paid off the entire loan
and are ready to tackle the superstructure. As to the com-
fort of these dwellings under severe conditions the report of
these enterprising cooperators concludes:
We are in the grip of old man winter now. We live in a
real winter country in which the mercury sometimes goes out
of sight. Our members who are in their warm basements want
to express their gratitude to the Boise office and to all con-
cerned in this good work for the added comfort that has come
to them in these cold winter days. They say that others may
346
THE SURVEY
look down on basement dwellers, hut for real warmth and
comfort there are few houses in the land that can compare
with a good basement house.
Here then, in essence, is a practical method that can be
used to provide suburban and rural housing without sub-
sidy, at an extremely low cash investment per home, and
with little danger of financial loss. It can be applied to
thousands of submarginal families, even if they do not own
building lots, by buying up cheap tracts and subdividing
them, adding the cost to the individual construction loan.
It is true that this plan offers only a minor attack on a
major national problem and that its application is limited
further by its dependence on the willingness and ability of
the cooperators to contribute their labor without cash com-
pensation. However, the new half-billion dollar housing
act, expected to provide for no more than 150,000 families,
is likewise a drop in the bucket leaving plenty of room for
other approaches to the problem.
Under the lona cooperative method the cash investment
per room is not $1250 nor even $1000, but from one tenth
to one fifth of that amount, and the amortization period,
without working undue hardship on the borrower, would
more likely average five than twenty years. In twenty
years, therefore, a given amount of loan funds can be ex-
pected to provide at least twenty times as much housing
under this plan as under the federal housing act. And by
what other plan can people on relief or part time employ-
ment expect to get any decent housing at all, except with
heavy governmental subsidies?
There is no federal agency at present ready to put such
a common sense plan into operation. It is not even possible
to obtain federal loans for such housing projects, as the
director of the Idaho Self-Help Cooperatives discovered
when trying to extend this plan to other communities.
WE now come to the second example, the purchasing
power of old people who, under the security pro-
gram, are receiving monthly assistance of $30 or less.
Admittedly it is difficult for those without other resources
and with no family attachments to get along on such a
small income. Here the experience of college student
groups operating rooming and boarding houses on a self-
help cooperative basis holds a lesson. I am not referring to
fraternity or sorority houses but to the spontaneously or-
ganized efforts of impecunious students particularly at a
few western universities. Why should not the same tech-
nique work with recipients of old age assistance?
Admitted that old folk are less active and enterprising
than young college people, they can, on the other hand,
devote their full time to the enterprise of managing their
own rooming and boarding houses and in addition can
engage in varied supplementary activities of their own
selection, such as gardening and canning for home use,
dressmaking, and possibly even the production of saleable
handcraft articles requiring more patience than dexterity.
With a regular though small monthly income, it becomes
possible for unattached old people to get together in groups
of six or more, to organize their own rooming and boarding
house on a cooperative basis, to divide the lighter house-
work among themselves equitably and to hire someone for
the heavier work. Living together in one house, they will
have better opportunities for recreation, companionship and
nursing care in case of illness. Members who do not fit in
for one reason or another can withdraw (or be made to do
so) on short notice, and will be no worse off than before
joining the group. The fact that the arrangement is volun-
tary and that the regulations are of the residents' own mak-
ing will tend to minimize dissatisfaction and irritation.
The first practical demonstration of this idea has been
made in the state of Washington, where a group of about
fifty old men organized to take over a dilapidated room-
ing house belonging to a lumber company. Instead of pay-
ing rent, the gioup agreed to recondition the building and
to keep it in repair. As a further outlet for the members'
energy the group obtained the use of a small tract of land
nearby, on which to grow their own vegetables. The rent-
free house was a windfall that cannot be counted on ordi-
narily, although the scheme of repairing houses in lieu of
rent has been utilized often by self-help cooperatives.
T) Y and large, it must be assumed that the old age pen-
-L* sioners lack the imagination, experience, and initiative
to undertake such a cooperative venture without prompt-
ing and guidance from the outside. Unfortunately, state
welfare agencies are usually hesitant to initiate or sponsor
activities for which they have no direct legislative man-
date. It happens that in the state of Washington self-help
cooperatives have thrived for some time with state sanction
and encouragement. Therefore this further extension of
the self-help technique seemed quite proper to the state
social security officials with whom I discussed the possi-
bility more than a year ago. But for this plan to have a
wide extension would require the endorsement and active
encouragement of the federal social security officials. With
such backing and the right kind of advisory service, thou-
sands of needy old men and women, at no extra cost to state
or federal governments, would be enabled to stretch their
allowances to obtain comforts impossible to any one of
them going it alone.
A third significant application of the cooperative self-
help technique has been made in the field of truck garden-
ing for home use. The early years of the depression saw
many garden programs carried on by relief agencies with
much enthusiasm and often disappointing results. In time
most of them were dropped as too costly. But in St. Louis
the program has been transformed, on a somewhat reduced
scale, into a self-governing, self-sustaining enterprise that
does not cost the taxpayers a cent. Credit for this trans-
formation belongs primarily to the former state supervisor
of the garden program who guided its reorganization.
The St. Louis Cooperative Garden Association took over
from the relief garden program several suburban tracts
that were fenced in and had a temporary network of water
lines for irrigation. Each tract has a garden supervisor,
paid by the association which is supported by small mem-
bership fees and by the annual rental charge of $3 for a
30 x 50 foot garden plot. Except for the free use of the land,
it receives no subsidy from any source. The rental of a plot
includes free use of water and expert advice as and when
desired. Seeds are purchased wholesale by the association
and retailed to the members at cost. As in all real coopera-
tives, the board of directors is elected by and from the mem-
bers, and the membership has a controlling voice in deter-
mining policies and major expenditures.
The number of plots a member may rent is limited but
he is free to grow whatever he pleases and as many crops
as he may be able to coax out of the soil in a season. He is
the sole owner of whatever he and his family produce.
Returns on single plots average well over $50 per season,
reckoned by the prices of the green-grocer around the cor-
NOVEMBER 1937
347
ner. A seasoned amateur gardener knows how to double
or triple this yield. This accounts for the fact that, despite
the cash fees and rental charges, the association in its second
year had grown to a membership of more than three hun-
dred. It should be noted that the membership consists
largely of relief clients, factory workers and other persons
of small income. Members are not recruited. The gardens
themselves and the fruits thereof are their own advertise-
ment. This year the demand for plots was so great that
new acreage was added.
This .group was fortunate in starting out with ready-to-
use garden tracts. To duplicate this plan elsewhere an
initial loan from private or public sources might be neces-
sary as well as organizational and technical advice at least
for a limited period. But private assistance of the right sort
is difficult to obtain in most communities, and there is at
present no governmental agency to sponsor a cooperative
garden program. Yet, without such sponsorship there is
little hope that people who might be eager to use this means
of adding to inadequate incomes will be able to do so.
It is well to remember that cooperative self-help in the
fields discussed, and in many other activities to which the
technique might be applied, cannot be expected to take the
place of large scale governmental programs of an ameliora-
tive nature. The cooperative process, based on voluntary
participation and on the willingness of the participants to
coordinate their individual efforts and to join their in-
dividual resources for mutual benefit, can be applied, to
begin with, only by relatively small groups. Its growth de-
pends on the gradual education of the people, around a
periphery of slowly expanding circles, to an appreciation
of enlightened self-interest and democratic functioning.
Nevertheless, there are grave and sound reasons why the
federal government should undertake to offer competent
advisory service and possibly even limited financial assist-
ance to groups of underprivileged citizens who are willing
to apply the cooperative self-help technique to specific eco-
nomic problems with which they are individually unable to
cope to their satisfaction. Howevei modest the results may
be in the beginning, their effect in each instance will be
either a creation of new material values or at least an ex-
tension of purchasing power for more or less submarginal
incomes. In either case it will mean economic benefits for
those in need of them, through their own efforts and at a
negligible cost to the government, for it would require no
elaborate administrative machinery and little or no subsidy.
But aside from the material aspects there are other bene-
fits to be gained. Active participation in a voluntary, demo-
cratic enterprise calling for the exercise of the very qualities
essential to good intelligent citizenship in a democratic
nation will be a means of regeneration for the participants,
restoring to them a healthy sense of self-confidence and a
belief in their usefulness to society.
Here is an effective technique, demonstrated as practical
in method and application, that encourages individual initia-
tive and voluntary effort toward economic betterment. It
does not "put government into business" since by its very
nature it precludes government operation. To whatever
extent it is used, it will decrease rather than increase de-
pendence on governmental hand-outs.
Farmers on Relief
By IRVING LORGE
Teachers College, Columbia University
IN becoming accustomed, as we have of late years, to
line graphs representing unemployment of workers, de-
cline in wages and in purchasing power, number of
industrial failures, foreclosure of farms and hundreds of
equally depressing indices, we have become inured to the
human tragedies they chart. The descending curves from
1928 through 1935 depict more than an abridgement of
physical and economic values. Huddled on the sheer slopes
of these graphs were human beings — men and women and
children — without jobs, resources or hope, people whose
deprivations were aggravated by the hostile natural trium-
virate of drought, dust and flood.
Of all the federal alphabetic agencies designed to spell
restoration and recovery, none was more certainly directed
to save human resources than were the Federal Emergency
Relief Administration and its successors, and none affected
more individuals as individuals. In the beginning the at-
tempts at rescue were haphazard, often providing straws
instead of buoys. The history of the emergence of plans
for human reclamation is gradually being recorded in a
series of research monographs of the division of social re-
search of the Works Progress Administration. The eighth
study, Farmers on Relief and Rehabilitation, records the
operation of the rural relief and rehabilitation program.
In this study, Berta Asch and A. R. Mangus show that
"farm families that received public assistance under various
federal relief programs were only in part victims of the
depression." More than a million farmer and farm laborer
families needed and received relief grants or rehabilitation
advances under federal programs. Taking a sample of 138
agricultural counties as of June 1935 as representative of
the nine agricultural areas in which farm relief problems
bulked largest, the monograph surveys the extent and
causes of farm distress, relief and rehabilitation programs,
types and amounts of relief, social characteristics of relief
recipients, employment in relation to the land, factors in
production, and programs of reconstruction.
The June 1935 farm relief load varied widely among
states. In New Mexico, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, and
Colorado the incidence of relief and rehabilitation included
more than a fifth of all farmers ; and in Kentucky, Florida,
Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, South
Carolina and Wyoming more than 10 percent of all farm-
ers received such aid. These fourteen states contained only
one fourth of all the farms in the United States in June
1935, and yet contained over half of all farmers receiving
relief and rehabilitation aid. Look at the distribution of
these states on a map, and you will see the effects of
drought, dust and floods in 1934. If there are gaps in the
succession of the states, if some states have heavier relief
loads than others under the same unfavorable conditions,
it must be remembered that relief programs varied from
state to state. The monograph points out that relief policy
was more liberal in some states than in others depending
upon administration, standards of living, prevailing crop
and employment status. Variation in relief load does not
348
THE SURVEY
correlate highly with relief need. This single point should
be a first guidepost to a planned program for the conserva-
tion of human resources.
Most of the employed as well as the unemployed heads
of farm families on relief rolls received work relief rather
than direct relief in June 1935, a fact which shows that
many of them were normally full time farmers forced to
seek aid because of drought, dust or flood or were part time
farmers whose auxiliary sources of income were wiped out
by the depression.
THE amount of relief in June 1935 averaged $13 for
farm owners, $12 for farm laborers and tenants, and
$9 for croppers. Negroes in agricultural groups received
smaller relief grants than whites. Farmers on rehabilitation
received advances averaging $189 which varied from $31
in the spring wheat area to $416 for the whites in the
western cotton area.
The farmers receiving this relief, the authors indicate,
did not differ markedly in age from all farmers in the
United States. The trend of relief from February to June
'935, however, shows that younger farmers and younger
/arm laborers left relief rolls more rapidly than older re-
cipients. The average age of farm owners was 46.5; of
farm tenants, 37.9; and of farm laborers, 36.1 years. Un-
fortunately, the authors did not average their data to show
the age distribution of the other members of the households.
For, if they had, it would have been shown that there were
more persons under ten, and from ten to fourteen years of
age in the rural farm relief population than in the total
rural farm populations in 1930. An independent study
shows in this relief population a ratio of 1858 children
under ten years per thousand women aged twenty to forty-
five years, as contrasted with 1604 in the total rural farm
population in 1930.
The size of the household was probably greater than the
figures reported since many households with only one work-
er were found frequently in the lower socio-economic group
of farm laborer. Non-family men were relatively more
frequent in the lake states cut-over area, and non-family
women in the eastern cotton belt. To some extent these
non-family households show the extent of migration of
farmers and farm laborers during drought and depression
years. The migratory trend is as much an effect as it is a
cause of the need for relief.
About three fourths of the heads of farm households on
relief were farmers by usual occupation, the rest were farm
laborers. Tenants other than sharecroppers constituted
more than half of farm operators on relief, owners about
a third, sharecroppers about an eighth. In general, the
situation of croppers was more precarious than for other
farm operators, for sharecroppers were not able to remain
on the land to the same degree as owners. While farmers
and farm laborers were leaving the open country, non-
agricultural workers were moving to the marginal farms.
Part of the relief load was composed of workers trying to
farm poor soil which could not support them.
The greater economic resources of owners and tenants,
as compared with those of sharecroppers and laborers, were
reflected in the length of time elapsing between the loss of
their tenure and the time of their appearance as relief
recipients. Displaced laborers received relief three months
after loss of their usual employment; sharecroppers after
five ; tenants after seven ; and owners after thirteen.
Farm operators on relief operated smaller acreages than
all farm operators reported by the 1935 agricultural census.
The small acreages show that relief recipients included a
larger proportion of chronic or marginal cases. This mar-
ginality was further indicated by the lack of livestock and
poultry necessary for self-support. The great majority of
these relief farm operators reported more than ten years
of farm experience. Of course, experience does not indicate
expertness.
As a matter of fact, it is probable that the more expert
farmers in need of relief were placed on rehabilitation rolls.
Rehabilitation farmers came largely from open country
areas, where, in general, they operated larger farms than
relief operators. An indication of a greater expertness as
contrasted with experience is evidenced in the fact that
the proportion of farm laborers among rehabilitation clients
was smaller than among relief families.
These facts, showing the type of relief and rehabilitation
recipients, lead up to Prof. T. J. Woofter's excellent chap-
ter on Programs of Reconstruction in which Ke reviews
the need for reconstruction of American agriculture in
terms of human values as well as of natural resources. He
suggests reform of the tenant system, arrest of the increase
of tenancy, the need for rural rehabilitation loans, guided
migration and cooperative farming, especially for small
farms. He points out that measures for agricultural reform
cannot be expected to yield immediate results.
It must be kept in mind that the monograph deals only
with farmer operators on relief or on rehabilitation. Im-
portant as is the situation of relief farm operators, the
group constitutes only 42 percent of all heads of rural
families on relief in June 1935. The other rural relief
recipients do not live on farms; they live off them. The
situation of the rural non-agricultural relief recipients is
inseparably tied up with the success of the farmers. The
recovery of the farmers must be related to the restoration
of the agricultural service area.
IF one were to cavil at any aspect of the study, it would
not be with what is in it, but with what is left out. Too
much emphasis seems laid on the farm operator household
head, not enough upon the family for which he is the
breadwinner. The factors causing a farm operator to go
on relief also affect his family, especially his younger
children. When one considers the average age of the relief
and rehabilitation farm operators, it becomes evident that
immediately after the world war, they were in the twenty
to thirty age group. In 1920, when demand for labor, as
well as wages, was at a peak, many of them sought immedi-
ate cash income instead of planning for the future. The re-
sulting lack of economic security, the meanings in relief and
the lack of realistic education should be weighed for relief
children as well as for relief heads.
Berta Asch, A. R. Mangus, and T. J. Woofter have
produced a very significant contribution to an already sig-
nificant series of social research documents. The appendix
on Methodology of Rural Current Change Studies gives
the basis for the careful sampling procedure used in the
collection of the data. The glossary giving special meanings
for terms used will do much to dispel misinterpretation.
As Professor Woofter points out, "The administration
has been groping through an unprecedented situation with-
out an adequate chart or compass." The monograph is, in
a sense, both chart and compass for the future — a future in
which it is hoped that intelligent planning will prevent
another toboggan of the social-economic charts and graphs.
NOVEMBER 1937
349
The Common Welfare
Teeth of the Law
CRIMINAL penalties have been invoked for the first
time to protect the rights of labor under the Wagner
labor relations act. A federal grand jury last month brought
indictments against twenty-two Kentucky coal mine com-
panies, twenty-four coal company executives, and twenty-
three deputy sheriffs and former deputy sheriffs. Following
revelations before the Senate Civil Liberties Committee last
spring, indictments were sought by the Department of
Justice. It acted under an old statute of the reconstruction
period, making it a crime for two or more persons to con-
spire to deprive citizens of civil rights guaranteed them by
the Constitution and the laws of the country.
Specifically, the indictments charge that the collective
bargaining rights of employes of the coal companies were
violated by a conspiracy over a period from July 5, 1935 to
the present. The Harlan County Coal Operators Associa-
tion is alleged to have been organized for the purpose of
intimidating miners to prevent their forming unions. The
alleged conspiracy included hiring "thugs and gunmen" to
threaten, beat and kill employes, imprisonment of union
members on false charges, breaking up of union meetings,
dismissal of employes for union activity. Finally, the con-
spiracy, it is charged, included an arrangement under which
law enforcement officers carried out the directions of the
association to intimidate, injure and kill union organizers
who attempted to enter the county.
The indictments are based on the story unfolded before
the La Follette Committee by reluctant witnesses who, some
of them afraid for their own lives, testified to the activities
of mine guards and deputy sheriffs, dominated by the asso-
ciation and by the sheriff who was himself a coal operator
in Harlan County.
Instead of a Canal
ON the abandoned site of the Florida Ship Canal, the
University of Florida last year developed one of the
most interesting adult education centers in the country.
Camp Roosevelt, constructed to house War Department
engineers assigned to the canal project, includes administra-
tion buildings, seventy-eight well equipped cottages, two
dormitories, a cafeteria, machine, electrical and carpenter
shops, its own water, sewage and telephone systems. With a
small initial WPA grant, the extension division of the Uni-
versity of Florida under the leadership of Dean Bert C.
Riley took over the plant. The only entrance requirements
set were willingness to work and readiness to pass on in-
formation and training received. A fee of one dollar a day
covered room, board, instruction, books, laboratory supplies.
In its first nine months the school enrolled 4206 students
who attended sixty-nine courses and twenty-two conferences.
The program was planned in one to four weeks' courses,
aimed to serve directly the needs of the people of Florida.
Much of the interest was found to center on vocational
training and handicrafts. Among the professional courses
was an interdenominational program for ministers. An
intensive course for CCC supervisors covered soil conserva-
tion, lumbering, first aid, simple furniture making. Organ-
ized labor groups supplied a majority of the student body.
Rural teachers came to learn homemaking and handicrafts
to pass on to the families of their pupils. In May, police
officers from one hundred Florida communities attended a
specialized course, with crime experts from New York and
Chicago among the instructors. The school is continuing
this year, with increasing numbers clamoring for courses.
Boston and Birth Control
THE Birth Control League of Massachusetts does not
propose to take lying down the action of the Boston
municipal court in fining two of its officers for "distributing
written information as to where contraceptive advice may
be obtained." It has appealed the cases and will if necessary
carry them to the highest courts. Meantime the American
Birth Control League and its twenty-four state affiliates are
raising a defense fund to aid the Massachusetts league.
The Massachusetts trouble began in late summer when
the Boston office of the league was raided. Police seized a
supply of pamphlets entitled To the Welfare Worker of
Massachusetts which gave the addresses of the league's
seven offices to which social workers might refer clients
needing contraceptive advice for reasons of health. Previous
raids had been made in Salem and Brookline. The Boston
raid was followed by the arrest of Mrs. Leslie D. Hawks-
worth, president of the Massachusetts league, and Mrs.
Caroline Carter Davis, its educational director. Brought
into court early in October they were fined $200 each. The
seven birth control centers in the state, some of which have
been functioning for five years, have been closed.
At a meeting of the directors of the American Birth
Control League where the Massachusetts situation was dis-
cussed, it was reported that 350 medically directed birth
control clinics are now functioning in forty-one states and
the District of Columbia, 110 of them in hospitals and in
city and county health departments. New York City has
twenty-four, twelve of them located in settlement houses.
What of the Children?
WHEN Congress passed the law which to all practical
purposes bars aliens from WPA employment, those
who believe that America is for Americans only must have
rubbed their hands with satisfaction. The law makes aliens
eligible for WPA who have declared their intention to be-
come citizens, but since full citizens are given preference,
and since there are not enough jobs anyway, the declarant
has a slim chance, if any. But that thousands of the disbarred
are the sole support of American-born wives and children
is something that seems to have been overlooked. A few
figures are enlightening. According to a sample study of the
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service 90.7 percent
of the minor children of nearly 4000 male declarants were
born in this country. Again the records of the New York
Emergency Relief Bureau show that on a certain date last
year 11,066 declarants and 25,093 alien clients had respec-
tively 18,240 and 33,261 American-born children.
In a recent article in the Baltimore Sun reporting the
removal from the Maryland relief rolls of 156 alien heads
350
THE SURVEY
of families (134 living in Baltimore) it was stated that
"although the Department of Public Welfare does not make
citizenship a requirement, the strictness of present relief
policies makes it unlikely that many could receive city aid."
Who, it well may be asked, is responsible for the American
children of these families who, whatever their necessities,
must live in a sort of no-man's relief land ?
Lesson and Answer
GOVERNOR Stanford of Arizona has announced that
he will not seek reelection. Job seekers so have hounded
his official and personal life that only by ridding himself of
the political obligations implied in another candidacy can
he function at all. For the remainder of his term he pro-
poses, he says, to be a free lance executive with no reelection
axe to grind.
Startled at such a break with orthodox political practice
certain newspapers of the state are facing the facts of life.
Says a Phoenix editor:
The growth of the state, increasing necessity for proven tech-
nical ability as contrasted with political ability, requires now
that this spoils system be abolished . . . civil service is the only
answer. . . . While it is not a panacea, the very fact that it
requires examinations eliminates at once a horde of incompe-
tents . . . and it does brirg to an end the continual turnover in
state positions which is now so disgusting to the public and dis-
couraging to faithful public servants. Civil service for state
positions has now become a necessity.
In contrast to Arizona's beset executive let us turn to the
experience of New York State, where, under the reorgani-
zation of the Department of Social Welfare, incident to the
transfer of the Temporary Emergency Relief Administra-
tion, upwards of 700 new jobs were created, some of them
with the proportions of plums. Has New York's chief execu-
tive been hounded by "a horde of incompetents" backed by
the pressure of the patronage system? He has not. Every
one of the jobs from executive director of public assistance
at $7000 a year down to assistant account clerk at $1200 is
under civil service. Neither the governor nor "the good of
the party" has anything to do with filling them. The good
of the service is the only measure. Specifications for the jobs
and the minimum qualifications for candidates were drawn
up by the professional staff of the Department of Social
Welfare. The Department of Civil Service advertised and
will conduct the examinations and rate the results. Inci-
dentally the required qualifications of education, training
and experience would shiver the timbers of the old-line
politicians in Governor Stanford's state. Just possibly they
make some of those in Governor Lehman's quiver a little.
Civil service is no panacea for personnel ills but up to
now, as New York knows and as Arizona is discovering, it
is the best answer we have.
Felix Warburg
<«-r>ELIX WARBURG is dead." The words, passing
-T rapidly from telephone to telephone on an October
morning brought a sense of personal loss to people in every
walk of New York life, and presently into circles that
spread far and wide in this country and abroad.
Of a distinguished Hamburg family, devotion to educa-
tion, music and art was part of Felix Warburg's heritage.
With it was coupled a profound personal sense of the obli-
gation of wealth. It is impossible to mention here the many
areas of social, educational and artistic endeavor through
which this sense of stewardship was channeled. It pervaded
his whole career, and expressed itself not only in gifts of
money but, even more notably, in participation — in giving to
the causes which engaged not only his sympathy, his loyalty
and his social intelligence but also those qualities of insight,
lucidity and acumen which made him a statesman in bank-
ing and business. His interest, once engaged, was dynamic
and purposeful, never perfunctory. Because of it the con-
ditions of life of many thousands of humble people — the
sick, the aged, the blind — were touched and changed.
Of late years the problems of the Jews in Europe and
Palestine made heavy claims on his sympathy and energy.
He was alert to the immediate necessities of distraught men,
women and children, but undaunted by cruelty and injustice,
he drove his influence steadily toward the goal of inter-
racial and international understanding and cooperation. The
long view and the near were both clear to him.
The term philanthropist has been somewhat easily applied
of late in American life. But for Felix Warburg one may
turn back to its true meaning, "a lover of mankind, a benev-
olent friend of men, one devoted to human welfare."
"Major" Murphy
THAT was the title by which social workers knew him
in the World War where he served as the first com-
missioner to Europe of the American Red Cross. He was
vice-president of the Guaranty Trust Company at the time ;
a leading broker in the years since until his death in Octo-
ber. A graduate of West Point, before the close of the war
he served at the front with the Rainbow Division and as
chief of the American aviation units in England. But in
those first crucial months before American troops were on
French soil in numbers, it was he who laid down the frame-
work for American participation in terms of rapidly ex-
panded work for refugees, repatries and the stricken villages
of the war zone, of hospital, nursing and social services. It
may have been that an army officer and a financier were not
essential to their projection. The point was that as a man
Grayson M.-P. Murphy made the grade — with insight,
initiative and poise. One of his business specialties had been
that of rehabilitating industrial and public service corpora-
tions that were at loose ends. That perhaps gave him his
clue in the telling way in which, when the Austrian army
broke through at the north, he threw an emergency Red
Cross staff into Italy which carried on from the Piave line
to Sicily until a permanent commission could take over.
And So On
ON the "must" list for consideration by the special
session of Congress, convening this month, are the
proposals for the rearrangement of federal executive agen-
cies in line with the recommendations of the President's
Committee on Administrative Management. [See Survey
Graphic, March 1937, page 126.] With as yet no serious
opposition, and with House and Senate proposals in sub-
stantial agreement, as they are said to be, there is hope for
at least first steps toward more efficient administration of
"everybody's business." • • The U. S. Supreme Court has
refused to review the case of Haywood Patterson, one of
the Scottsboro Negroes, now under sentence to serve seven-
ty-five years in prison. [See The Survey, September, page
225.] His attorneys held that he was twice deprived of
the constitutional guarantee of "due process": in the course
of his trial in the Alabama courts.
NOVEMBER 1937
351
The Social Front
Compensation
'""THE census of unemployment will seek
• answers to fourteen questions, asked
on blanks which the post office depart-
ment will distribute to 31 million families
between November 16 and 20. The ques-
tions are to be answered only by those
who are able and willing to work and
who are, at the time of the census, unem-
ployed or partially unemployed. One
group of questions refers to the employ-
ment status of the person making the
return, a second group to members of his
family. The recipient of the blank is di-
rected to return it before midnight No-
vember 20.
Coverage and Contributions — So-
cial Security Board estimates indicate
that the volume of employment covered
by approved state compensation laws in-
creased more than three-fold within the
fiscal year ending June 30, 1937. In June
1936, some 6 million workers were em-
ployed in jobs covered by the approved
laws of ten states and the District of
Columbia. A year later, 46 states, the
District of Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii
had approved laws covering almost 19
million workers. Since that time, approval
of the Illinois and Missouri laws has
brought the estimated number of workers
covered to almost 21 million.
As of September 15, the unemployment
trust fund amounted to $448,482,983.22.
This represented deposits and earnings
of 42 states and the District of Colum-
bia. Interest on state deposits amounted
to $2,828,983.86. The largest depositor
was New York, with a balance of over
$73 million, followed by Pennsylvania
with more than $53 million, and Cali-
fornia with almost $48 million.
Administration — Payment of unem-
ployment compensation benefits in twenty-
two states is scheduled to begin January
1. Under the provision of the social se-
curity act which makes federal grants
available to the states for the administra-
tion of unemployment compensation, the
board is making allotments for the ex-
pansion of state employment services. All
but two of the states which will shortly
begin to pay benefits had received initial
allotments for this purpose by October 1.
. . . The board has developed material
designed to assist the states in setting up
benefit payment procedures. Its commit-
tee on these procedures has already dis-
tributed to the states a memorandum
which attempts to define all the steps in-
volved in the simplest benefit payment
scheme. This covers the moves which
must be made by worker, employer, state
352
administrative office, local employment
office. A second memorandum, dealing
with payment of benefits for partial un-
employment will be issued shortly.
The chairman of the Florida Indus-
trial Commission announces the adoption
of five regulations for the administration
of the unemployment compensation law:
contributions are due and payable
monthly, not later than the twenty-fifth
of each month; each employing unit must
make such reports as are prescribed by
the commission; accurate payroll records
must be kept; selection of personnel is
placed on a merit basis.
In Arkansas suits will soon be filed
against those employers who "deliber-
ately ignore" the state unemployment
compensation law by failing to pay the
taxes due under the measure, according
to an announcement by W. A. Rooksbery,
director of the unemployment compensa-
tion division of the State Department of
Labor.
Conference — Organization of state ad-
ministrative machinery, particularly as
related to benefit payments, was a major
topic of discussion at the Interstate Con-
ference of Unemployment Compensation
Administrators, which held its eighth
national conference in Washington last
month. State administrators from all
parts of the country, members of the So-
cial Security Board and of its Bureau of
Unemployment Compensation, and of the
U.S. Employment Service participate in
these "working conferences," which serve
as centers of discussion of common prob-
lems, and clearing houses of experience.
. . . An experimental employers' confer-
ence on social security problems was
held in Pittsburgh, October 14, in an at-
tempt to clear up puzzling aspects of
employers' duties under the social security
act. The machinery of wage records, and
unemployment compensation in relation
to reemployment were among the topics
discussed.
Merit Systems — Ten states having a
civil service system already in operation —
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Con-
necticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin —
have brought unemployment compensa-
tion personnel within the existing system,
and are recruiting new employes through
its regular channels. In all but five of
the remaining states, the unemployment
compensation law contains provisions giv-
ing the administrative agency respon-
sibility for developing personnel stand-
ards. In nineteen states the law definitely
provides for holding examinations and
choosing personnel on a merit basis.
Twenty-nine states prohibit the employ-
ment of persons serving as officers or
committee members of a political party
organization. The Bureau of Unemploy-
ment Compensation of the Social Security
Board has issued a manual of specifica-
tions for positions in a state agency.
Research — The Social Security Board
has issued to the states its requirements
for statistical reporting on coverage, con-
tributions and benefits. The benefits data
will show the number of claims and
their dispositions; the dates on which
claims are paid; the lapse of time be-
tween claim and payment. . . . The
Bureau of Research and Statistics is
working on a study of merit rating in
connection with employers' contributions.
It will include an analysis of merit-rating
provisions of state laws, the problems
that arise under them, some conclusions
intended to aid in their administration.
. . . The bureau is also studying British
decisions in disputed claims for benefits,
to determine their possible applicability
to American experience A study of
South Carolina wages, made by the direc-
tor of research and statistics of the state
unemployment commission, showed that
thousands of South Carolina workers re-
ceive less than $15 a week, and that two
thirds of those covered by the law prob-
ably receive less than $20 a week. The
study was based on the records of 8095
employes representing different industries
and areas in South Carolina.
WPA-Relief
*~pHE dropping of a million workers
1 from WPA rolls has been for some
weeks an accomplished fact; but the ex-
tent of its reverberations is only begin-
ning to appear. Coming in late September
and October, widespread reports of
swollen local relief loads as a result of
WPA's reduced burden apparently indi-
cate an interim of self-maintenance, now
reaching an end. A hit-or-miss sampling
over a two weeks' period of early fall
showed news headlines in New York,
Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Wis-
consin, California, on the general theme
"relief load rises as WPA curtails." In
New York City, at last reports, 20,000 of
those laid off WPA since last July 1 have
been found eligible for home relief, thus
increasing the city relief bureau's operat-
ing costs by a monthly item of $925,000.
"WPA must go on," said Aubrey Wil-
liams in a recent speech. "The govern-
ment . . . will have to see to it those who
want work and need work can have it."
But his statement is considerably de-
limited by official reminders that, for the
THE SURVEY
period ending next June 30, WPA must
be kept down to an average of 1,650,000
of those persons who want and need to
work. At present WPA is about 200,000
under that average, to allow for some
expansion during the winter season of
greatest need. Those workers now re-
tained on WPA are nearly "simon pure"
needy, 97 percent having been certified as
in need of relief.
An unfortunate concomitant of rising
demands for local relief is this year's ap-
parent advance in the season for de-
pleted and even exhausted resources.
After study by Governor Homer and a
citizen's committee, Chicago is still con-
vinced that the only solution of the city's
relief problem is reemployment in private
industry. A reexamination of relief rolls
has been ordered "as a means of prodding
employables to finding work in private
industry, and reducing expenditures."
Cincinnati, through a citizen group, is at-
tempting to meet its problem by an inten-
sive drive to get jobs for those long
unemployed. Arizona finds itself in a
plight for relief funds which, it now
appears, is likely to result in declaration
of an emergency, by the governor, in
order to release general state funds for
relief uses. Denver, Colo., since Decem-
ber 1936 paying relief clients only 60
percent of their budgets, in August was
able to pay only 40 percent. Also, relief
now is refused in Denver to families, no
matter how large, if the total income
from any source exceeds $55 monthly.
Although New York City relief rolls
have decreased by 14.8 percent since
the March 1936 peak, the city faces a
two-year high in its next quarterly
budget for relief, due largely to increase
in living costs.
The shouting headlines of recent weeks
would appear to be logical, if accelerated,
sequellae of the sober statistics now avail-
able for summer months. The last Social
Security Board bulletin on general urban
relief^ costs shows a "slight upward
trend" for August as compared with
July; the National Industrial Conference
Board reported an increase of nearly
150,000 unemployed in August over July.
Meanwhile, President Roosevelt's most
recent public reference to relief fore-
shadowed lessening of federal participa-
tion in relief costs and called for local
resources, public and private, to take
over more and more responsibility for
support of the needy and unemployed.
Toward Jobs— In New York City, a
first trial has been made of a system of
grading WPA workers according to their
productivity, allowing wage increases to
those with the best output, and demoting
those lacking skill. This experiment, ap-
plied to a sewing project, was explained
by Col. Brehon B. Somervell, local WPA
administrator, as helping to "equip proj-
ect employes for outside jobs." He also
reported that most unions in this field,
NOVEMBER 1937
American Red Cross, 1937 Roll Call
which is largely closed shop, had agreed
to accept WPA workers who demon-
strated sufficient ability.
A special project to train home relief
clients for jobs, at which they may be-
come self-sustaining, now enlists nearly
four hundred young men and women
under the aegis of the New York City
WPA's adult education project. The
emergency relief bureau selects the "stu-
dents," the WPA gives them special
courses, mostly in commercial subjects,
and upon completion of their work the
state employment service will aid them
in finding jobs. A favorite course in "busi-
ness machines" trains pupils to operate
adding machines, calculators and such
mechanical office devices.
The project is experimental, in the
hope that by investing in job education,
the city may be able to save a much
greater sum in relief funds.
WPA Pluses— The WPA, country-
wide, is engaged in a diversity of projects
for the blind. Outstanding is a class in
creative writing for the blind in
Berkeley, Calif., members of which have
produced articles, plays, chapters of
books. In another class Braille shorthand
is taught. Some blind students have at-
tained a proficiency to match that of a
sighted person in commercial shorthand.
In Georgia, daily and weekly Braille
news sheets are distributed to a list of
more than five hundred readers. A recent
innovation was the printing of pin-point
photographs of persons prominent in the
news. The supply of Braille literature
constantly is being enlarged through
WPA efforts. Braille maps made by a
Boston WPA project and the Perkins In-
stitution have been distributed to blind
schools.
One of the most ambitious projects is
the making and wide distribution of
"talking book" machines, so that standard
size books may be available on records
to blind persons who cannot read Braille.
A single WPA project in New York City
has produced more than 15,000 machines
which have been distributed widely
through the states and even sent to for-
eign countries. The leper colony at Molo-
kai, Hawaii, and the Leper Home of
the U. S. Public Health Service in Car-
ville, La., have been supplied.
More than 3,300,000 New York City
school children have been given safety
instruction through a WPA teaching
project. Poster talks, stereopticon slides,
motion pictures and class instruction have
been used to impress on these children,
surrounded by hazards, the importance
of safety habits.
Another New York City project is the
Parents' and Children's Clinics, where
domestic problems of troubled families
are brought for counsel. The WPA edu-
cation unit of the city board of education
maintains the clinics.
During the past summer, according to
WPA Administrator Harry Hopkins, the
American public used $500 million of
WPA-built recreational facilities, includ-
ing swimming pools, bathing beaches,
parks and playgrounds, athletic fields and
recreational and social buildings.
An estimated 100,000 children in New
York City will receive hot free lunches
each day, and 66,000 more a daily half
pint of milk, from the efforts of the New
York City WPA project for child nutri-
tion, sponsored by the Board of Educa-
tion. To qualify for free meals, the chil-
dren must have parents on home relief or
working for WPA. About 2500 workers
on this project are paid $13.96 weekly.
They must have passed a rigid physical
examination.
New York's recreation center for the
adult physically handicapped, now in its
third season, was the first such center in
the United States to provide a program
of arts, crafts, social and physical recrea-
tion for orthopedically handicapped
adults. Membership, which started with
fifty, now has reached six hundred.
WPA Safety — Safety measures of the
WPA have resulted in an injury and
fatality rate far below normal expect-
ancy, according to a two-year report to
June 1937. The 1935 Department of
Labor estimates, based on injury expect-
ancy tables, predicted 2700 fatalities and
454,000 lost time injuries under the WPA
program during a period of twelve
months. Actually, there were only 814
fatal accidents and 95,000 disabling in-
juries during the five and one third bil-
lion man-hours worked by WPA
employes during the two years reported.
The WPA has carried on an intensive
and continuous safety campaign with
particular emphasis on training foremen,
abundant provision of safety devices and
frequent inspection of projects and equip-
353
merit. State and district safety staffs are
held responsible for the safety of
workers.
Will Not Down — Self-help organiza-
tions no longer seem to be the white hope
of relief agencies, but that they will not
down and that they show results for
some people is indicated by a recent re-
port from the California SRA. During
the last month for which data are avail-
able, fifty-six operating self-help units in
the state had a membership of 1192 per-
sons of whom 642 were receiving assist-
ance from some other source, chiefly
WPA employment. Fifty-two units re-
ported that their 1175 members received,
in June, $18,554 in cash and commodities
"from surplus created by the excess value
of production excluding labor." The
average received per member on this
basis was $15.79. It should be added
however that thirteen of the self-help
units yielded less than $10 a month
average to their 529 members; twenty-
three yielded between $10 and $20 to
416 members and six yielded between $20
and $30 to 120 members. One unit
yielded between $90 and $100, but it
had only four members.
Broken Homes — The Detroit Depart-
ment of Public Welfare, analyzing its
case load at the end of last year, found,
among many other things, that of 16,521
families on relief 7369 or 44.6 percent
had no man in the family, and 1680 or
10.2 percent had no woman.
How Employable? — Almost 78 per-
cent of the skilled workers on WPA
made grades of passable or better and
only 9 percent rated as definitely inferior,
in an efficiency study by WPA of workers
on projects in seven cities. According to
the findings recorded in A Report on
Progress of The Works Program, 1937,
"Analysis of the data secured indicates
that skilled workers employed on WPA
projects are generally of high caliber."
Of the total studied, 95 percent had been
taken from relief rolls. Brick and stone
masons, carpenters and painters were
major groups studied. The international
unions of these crafts cooperated in the
study. Ratings were made independently
by a WPA engineer and a representative
of the unions, and findings correlated.
Work, or Else — Harvest time in Cali-
fornia brought an order from Governor
Frank F. Merriam that capable SRA
clients must accept proffered agricultural
work or be taken off relief rolls. This
action, according to the press, followed a
statement issuing from the State Em-
ployment Service to the effect that it had
been unable to get needed labor off relief
rolls and into the harvest fields. In an
Illinois town, relief clients were directed
to appear for street cleaning work, under
a recent ruling that men on relief must
work out their "relief orders" on city or
township streets, roads or other munici-
pal work. In Columbus, Ohio, able-
bodied men on relief recently were di-
rected to work at such "odd jobs" as the
city provided, for which they are given
credit towards their relief checks at 50
cents an hour. In another Ohio town,
able-bodied men on relief were ordered
to work at the city's weed cutting or lose
relief status. In Tennessee, the attorney
general has promised that able-bodied
men who, though given WPA cards or
other opportunities, refuse to work, will
be prosecuted under the vagrancy law.
Important Reports — In a study of the
various "relief purges" which have been
made of Baltimore, Md. relief rolls, the
local Citizen's Alliance for Social Security
found such procedures "expensive to the
city, cruel to relief families and useless,
as a method for permanently reducing
the relief population."
The alliance, an association of volun-
tary organizations working for a more
liberal relief policy, studied the condition
of 450 families who were cut off relief
last May, with the termination of the
Emergency Charity Association and not
taken over by the Department of Public
Welfare. Needy families had to make
new applications to the department. WPA
families who had been receiving supple-
mentary relief were hardest hit, this form
of aid not being considered a department
responsibility.
The trained investigators who made
the study for the Citizen's Alliance re-
ported: that such reinvestigations of all
relief cases interfere with regular duties
of case workers; that the needy families
find their way back to the rolls anyway;
that the gap in relief during reapplication
and investigation causes unnecessary suf-
fering, especially among children.
In the 1936 annual report to the Penn-
sylvania State Emergency Relief Board
Karl de Schweinitz, executive director,
pointed to a 52 percent reduction in the
number of persons on relief last year and
a saving to the state of $130,309,249.
Expanded federal work programs ac-
counted for more than half the decrease
and private industry absorbed the re-
mainder, Mr. de Schweinitz said. The
report covered activities for the then
ERB, now superseded by the Department
of Public Assistance, also headed by Mr.
de Schweinitz.
The final report of New York's Tem-
porary Emergency Relief Administration,
called Five Million People — One Billion
Dollars, covers the TERA's entire ex-
istence— November I, 1931-June 30,
1937. The report was challenged in the
press on the startling total given of five
million persons (two fifths of the state's
total population) who at one time or
another during the period had been
recipients of relief. Frederick I. Daniels,
chairman, defended the figure and stated
that it refers to that number of different
individuals. The report recounts in de-
tail New York State's pioneering effort
in developing a relief program, em-
phasizes the growth from the early
"emergency" approach to relief into its
present status as a regular responsibility
of government in the State Department
of Welfare.
Salvage — The depression-born Life Ad-
justment Bureau, formed six years ago at
the suggestion of social workers to
salvage the insurance protection of re-
lief clients, reports that it has dealt with
some 514,406 families to realize upward
of $25 million in cash on their policies
and to effect a substantial saving in
premium charges while at the same time
continuing a '"reasonable" degree of pro-
tection. The companies that maintain the
bureau, the Metropolitan, the John Han-
cock and the Prudential, handle, it is
said, more than 85 percent of the indus-
trial insurance in the country.
Addenda — Besides the anticipated sub-
jects for study by the special Senate Com-
mittee on Unemployment Relief, [see
The Survey, October 15, page 320] Alan
Johnstone, counsel, has included in
agenda to be submitted: effects of tech-
nological changes and action necessary to
correct undesirable effects; the historical
entry of the United States into "the re-
lief business"; the effects of the "se-
curity wage" as opposed to the "prevail-
ing wage" ; the effectiveness of unem-
ployment offices in coping with the relief
problem; the administration of relief and
social security programs, with a com-
parison of advantages of federal and
local direction; th'e problem of the mi-
gratory unemployed. The committee
probably will hold public hearings this
month or next.
Public Assistance
AN estimated 488,500 dependent chil-
dren received aid during October
through social security programs. The
number is expected to grow considerably
in coming months as recently approved
state plans are developed. Missouri, most
recent state to gain Social Security Board
approval of its plan for dependent chil-
dren, will aid approximately a thousand
under that program during the present
quarter. About 1,469,700 aged and 487,-
500 needy blind persons now are receiv-
ing social security assistance. Total
grants for the first quarter of the present
fiscal year, June 30-September 30,
amounted to $44,009,937.48.
Recent additions to the list of states
which have "tried and tried again," and
now have approval of revised social se-
curity plans, include: Missouri, Colorado,
North Dakota, Oregon and Texas. Most
354
THE SURVEY
of the changes were made in order to
improve administrative procedure.
Pressures, Up and Down — The
tendency of certain county welfare of-
ficials in North Carolina to pare down
old age allowances practically to the van-
ishing point is opposed by the State Board
of Charities and Public Welfare. Says
Mrs. W. T. Bost, commissioner, "We
are discouraging average grants of $7
or $8 or less and we suggest no grants
less than $5 per month. We have sent
back scores of applications for less than
$2 and advised county welfare officials
to revise them upward." As estimated
by G. R. Parker, regional director for the
Social Security Board, the average old
age assistance in North Carolina is $12
monthly.
"They say" in Washington that Mis-
sissippi is under pressure from the So-
cial Security Board on account of its
"pitifully inadequate" old age allowances,
that unless the allowances are increased
the program will not warrant federal
assistance. In July 1936 some 15,467 aged
persons were receiving monthly allow-
ances averaging $3.58; in July 1937
recipients numbered 534, allowances
averaged $4.25. . . . The Tulsa, Okla.
World said, in early October, "Hints of
a federal investigation into old age pen-
sion payments in Oklahoma — with veiled
charges that pension funds in the state
have been used to build political ma-
chines— were sounded ... on the heels of
reports that Oklahoma outranks all other
states on pension payments." The same
article asserts that an audit of pension
funds in Oklahoma has been ordered. . . .
From the Jacksonville, Fla. Times-Union
comes information that last month a rigid
federal audit of applications which have
been granted for old age assistance in
Florida was begun. . . . Commenting on
the charge that old age assistance grants
in Arkansas are too small, the Little
Rock Gazette points out that that state
ranks next to lowest in per capita spend-
able income and that "not only are as-
sistance payments too small, but most of
the other state expenditures are too
small," and "the basic deficiency is in the
income of the people of Arkansas."
The state welfare board of New Mex-
ico has decided that any applicant for old
age assistance having more than $150 will
not be considered needy. Irregular earn-
ings will be considered in determining the
amount of assistance payments. Persons
physically able to work will be encour-
aged to do so.
Liens and Estates — How old age as-
sistance affects estates of recipients after
their deaths has been the subject of much
discussion and many complicated legal
opinions. In Tennessee, according to re-
cent official opinion, before assistance is
granted to the aged or needy blind, appli-
NOVEMBER 1937
cants must give a "quit claim" to the
state and federal governments for any
property which may be owned by them
at their deaths. State and federal gov-
ernments then will have equal claims to
the applicant's property, up to the amount
of assistance paid and allowing not more
than $100 for funeral expense. The pro-
vision is intended to encourage children
or relatives to attempt to care for the
applicant in order that his property may
not revert to the government. It will not
be enforced against real estate during
occupancy by a surviving wife, husband or
dependent children.
In Wisconsin, the attorney general has
ruled that at the death of old age assist-
ance recipients, the first deduction from
proceeds of the estate shall reimburse
the state and county for funds which
have been paid over as pensions (appar-
ently before February 1, 1936); the sec-
ond deduction goes to the federal govern-
ment for moneys granted to the state
since February 1, 1936 for old age pay-
ments. Yet a third deduction goes to the
state and county for aid given since fed-
eral contributions started; and the re-
mainder— if there is a remainder — is
divided among the heirs.
A ruling of the Maryland Board of
State Aid and Charities now allows ap-
plicants for old age assistance to retain
up to $300 in liquid assets for burial and
other emergency expenses. However, no
person with liquid assets greater than
$300 will be given assistance. Applicants
with cash must establish bank accounts
jointly with the local welfare agency,
from which accounts money must be
drawn for expenses approved by welfare
officials.
Mortgaging of property owned by per-
sons granted old age assistance in Georgia
has been abandoned by the state Depart-
ment of Welfare. Mortgages or liens al-
ready taken will be dissolved. "The wel-
fare program can be carried on without
the necessity of the state insisting on the
lien agreement," says the department's
legal adviser.
Colorado — Storms of protest have
arisen over the provision, under Colo-
rado's $45-a-month old age pension law,
making mandatory the publication of
names of all recipients in a county news-
paper, once in six months. ... It was ex-
pected that as many as 35 percent of old
age pensioners in some Colorado counties
would be ineligible for payments under
the law, effective September 1, which bars
holders of property assessed at more than
$500. In Colorado many such holdings
represent dry farms or mining claims
which produce no income whatever.
Despite the difficulties of changing
from the former old age assistance law
to the new measure providing for old age
pensions, September payments to Colo-
rado's aged reached 26,748 persons, 2367
fewer than the total who received assist-
ance in August under the old law. The
pensions paid averaged $40.09. Only 172
persons between ages sixty and sixty-five
qualified for pensions.
The Labor Front
TjMVE of the 450 cases awaiting consid-
" eration by the U.S. Supreme Court
involve the national labor relations act,
upheld by the court last spring. One of
these cases is based on the first decision
of the Labor Board, announced in De-
cember 1935, finding that the Pennsyl-
vania Greyhound Lines were guilty of
"unfair labor practice" in promoting a
"company union," the Association of the
Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines.
Self-Discipline -- The United Auto-
mobile Workers of America has accepted
responsibility for fulfillment of its agree-
ments. In the course of the General Mo-
tors negotiations, which are still in prog-
ress, the union's executive committee
drew up a formal declaration which
reads, in part: "The union recognizes
and agrees that unauthorized strikes,
stoppages of work and deliberate reduc-
tion in rate of production ... are in-
defensible and for a violation of this
provision by the union, its officials or
members, the company will discharge or
otherwise discipline the employe or em-
ployes known to be or found guilty there-
of, and the union shall take effective
disciplinary action against the member or
members of the union responsible there-
for." In transmitting this action to the
company, Homer Martin, president of
the union, stated that his group had ex-
pected that "these commitments were to
be an integral part of the revision of the
existing agreement."
Child Labor— The Kentucky court of
appeals recently handed down a decision
declaring ratification of the child labor
amendment by the legislature of that state
null and void, on the grounds that Ken-
tucky had previously rejected the measure
and too long a period had elapsed since
submission of the amendment by Con-
gress to the states. At about the same
time, the Kansas supreme court upheld
the validity of ratification by Kansas,
which had been challenged on the same
grounds. The attorney general of Ken-
tucky has announced that he will appeal
the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Peace Moves — During the fifty-sev-
enth annual convention of the American
Federation of Labor, held at Denver
last month, a proposal for a peace con-
ference was received from John L. Lew-
is' Committee on Industrial Organization.
The CIO suggested that the AF of L
choose 100 members to meet with 100
CIO spokesmen, and attempt to find
355
some avenue to peace between the two
factions in which the American labor
movement is now split. The CIO com-
munication made it clear, however, that
the Lewis group would hold to its "basic
policy" of vertical organization in the
mass production industries. The AF of
L rejected this plan, but made a counter-
proposal, which the CIO accepted. Rep-
resentatives of the two organizations are
meeting in Washington at this writing.
The "minimum demands" presented by
the CIO and the "maximum concessions"
expected from the AF of L leave a wide
gap to be bridged by the negotiators.
Philip Murray heads the ten CIO rep-
resentatives; George M. Harrison, the
AF of L committee of three.
Steel's Experience — Collective Bar-
gaining in the Steel Industry: 1937, a
very useful "factual summary of recent
developments" has been prepared by the
Industrial Relations Section, Princeton
University. Price, $1.
Prison Congress
IN holding its sixty-seventh annual con-
gress in Philadelphia last month the
American Prison Association paid honor
to the Philadelphia Prison Association,
forebear of all prison reform movements
in this country, this year celebrating its
hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Dele-
gates to the meeting numbered 787 from
forty-four states and five foreign coun-
tries. While this was not a record in
attendance, the content and organization
of the program and the free and forth-
right quality of the discussion set a new
high.
The keynote came from the president,
William J. Ellis of New Jersey, when
he discussed prison administration as a
factor in crime prevention, and related
it to such topics as prison industries and
education, classification of prisoners, per-
sonnel, parole and so on, all of which
were discussed in detail by other speakers
later in the program.
It was apparent from many discussions
that the problem of idle prisoners lies as
a pall over the whole prison situation, a
deterrent to humanitarian progress, a
threat to orderly administration. And no
one, it seems, as yet has found the an-
swer. The Prison Industries Reorgan-
ization Administration believes that it is
on the right track but the inability or
unwillingness of states to finance the
necessary large scale corrective measures
makes progress difficult.
Curiously enough the dead end to
which prison industries have come seems
to be forcing more attention to prison ed-
ucation and to improved parole methods,
though in both there has been, numer-
ically speaking, little more than a good
beginning. For example, E. Preston Sharp
of the Eastern State Penitentiary, Phila-
delphia, reported excellent results from
a program of vocational and academic
education in which classroom coaching
and correspondence courses are combined ;
but of the 3000 prisoners in the institu-
tion only 700 are "going to school."
Parole of course runs into larger num-
bers, but its defects in practice, imposed
by starvation appropriations and the spoils
system, open the way to challenge. Here
Austin H. MacCormick of New York
warned that "under the verbal barrages
of the machine-gun school of criminology"
parole and prisons alike "are in danger
of falling into even worse oblivion than
they now enjoy."
In its resolutions the association de-
plored "indiscriminate attacks" on parole
as tending to "inflame and confuse the
public mind" and reaffirmed "its belief in
parole as the method of releasing pris-
oners which most effectively protects so-
ciety." It called for a further program
of federal-state cooperation to deal with
idleness in prisons, endorsed the pending
Wagner-Van Nuys anti-lynching bill and
the bill requiring registration of firearms,
and urged that salaries and working con-
ditions of prison custodial officers be at
least equal to those of paid police in the
same localities and that such officers be
selected, promoted and retained on the
merit principle.
The association elected as president
Rice M. Youell, warden of the Virginia
State Penitentiary and as vice-presidents,
Harold E. Donnell, Maryland; Austin
H. MacCormick, New York; James V.
Bennett, Washington, D. C. ; Roy Best,
Colorado and Mabel Bassett, Oklahoma.
Next year's meeting will be in St. Paul.
Old Age Insurance
TVJOTHING was changed but the name
when the Social Security Board's
Bureau of Old Age Benefits became the
Bureau of Old Age Insurance. The
change was due to a belief, on the part
of board and public, that the word "bene-
fits" was a misnomer, and smacked of
"charity" besides.
Unclaimed Benefits— About $400,000
in social security benefits due to wage
earners or their heirs is unclaimed. The
total is made up of small sums, due
thousands of individuals who became
sixty-five years old during the last year,
and due the estates of persons who died
after paying some Title VIII taxes. Ac-
tuaries had estimated that 300,000 ac-
counts would be closed this year because
of deaths and the attainment of the age
of sixty-five, but in the first nine months of
1937 only 30,000 accounts were closed.
Payroll of Sin — According to the Chi-
cago Tribune, federal agents assigned to
collect old age insurance levies are visit-
ing proprietors of underworld establish-
ments and informing them that the act's
provisions apply to illegitimate businesses
just as they apply to legitimate enterprises.
The Tribune reports that the proprietors
of such establishments "are anxious to
abide by the law and have shown will-
ingness to aid the agents." The informa-
tion regarding these establishments and
their payrolls is held confidential, and is
not available to law enforcing agencies.
He Looks Ahead — A one-year-old boy
whose job is that of modeling clothing
for a photographer, has become Indiana's
youngest applicant for a social security
account.
For Railroad Employes— The pro-
visions of the Railroad Retirement Act
of 1937 are analyzed by Murray W. Lat-
imer, chairman of the Railroad Retire-
ment Board in the current Labor Infor-
mation Bulletin, issued by the U.S. Bu-
reau of Labor Statistics. About 1,500,-
000 railroad workers come under the
act, which became law June 24, 1937.
The board already has received more
than 61,000 workers' applications for old
age or disability annuities. In addition,
more than 50,000 workers formerly car-
ried on the pension rolls of the roads
have been transferred to the federal
scheme. Approximately 1,450,000 individ-
uals have been given account numbers.
Annuities are payable on account of
either age or disability. Retirement at
sixty-five irrespective of years of service
is permitted but it is not compulsory. The
amount of the annuity depends on years
of service and "average monthly com-
pensation." The plan is financed by a
payroll tax on employers, and a tax on
employes' wages. These contributions be-
gin at 2% percent for each, increase to
3 percent in 1940, and to 3% percent in
1949. Mr. Latimer points out that many
will receive annuities under the Railroad
Retirement Act who could not have
qualified under the private plans, most of
which required a relatively long period
of service on a single road. Another
advantage he sees in the federal plan
is that employes had no guaranteed rights
to annuities under the private plans.
Even those who received relatively lib-
eral pensions or gratuities were "con-
stantly under the fear of their possible
cancellation and of the likelihood of gen-
eral reductions during . . . depression."
Overhauling — "Complete revision of
the social security act in its benefit pro-
visions and its creation of a huge re-
serve fund," will be studied by the So-
cial Security Advisory Council at a con-
ference opening November 5, according
to an announcement by A. J. Altmeyer,
chairman of the Security Board. The
council will consider the advisability of
starting monthly benefits before January
1, 1942; increasing monthly benefits for
persons retiring in the early years of
the program ; paying benefits to persons
356
incapacitated before sixty-five; extending
benefits to survivors of beneficiaries; in-
creasing social security taxes less rapid-
ly in future years; extending benefits to
groups not now included ; revising the
size, character and disposition of reserve
funds. The conference will be held at
the U.S. Department of Labor, Wash-
ington, D. C.
The Public's Health
DECAUSE of the new hygienic mar-
riage laws in Illinois and Wisconsin
requiring a physician's certificate that
both parties are free from venereal disease
before a marriage license will be issued,
there is a mushroom growth of Gretna
Greens in neighboring states. In Chicago,
the mid-summer averages of licenses is-
sued dropped from 140 to 45 a day. This
led to a movement among Illinois courts
urging other middle western states to fol-
low with hygienic marriage laws. Some
judges refuse to recognize runaway mar-
riages, citing an Illinois evasion statute
which provides that a marriage outside
the state by a person disabled or prohib-
ited from marriage within it shall be null
and void. Approximately eighteen states
have marriage evasion statutes. Besides
Connecticut, Wisconsin and Illinois, New
Hampshire and Oregon now require blood
tests for social diseases before marriage.
Oregon's statute is subject to popular
referendum at the next election. Alabama,
Louisiana, North Dakota and Wyoming
require a medical certificate from the
male applicant. Twenty-three states make
it unlawful for persons with social dis-
eases to marry, but do not require a cer-
tificate. New York and a few other states
require affidavits. Montana's pre-marital
examination law lost in a referendum.
As a feature of Chicago's city-wide
campaign against syphilis, doctors and
civic leaders directing the drive recently
'submitted publicly to blood tests. Cou-
pons for free examination by doctors
cooperating in the campaign have been
distributed to employes by various agen-
cies and industrial plants, to 50,000 WPA
workers and to 85,000 families on relief.
City, state and federal health bureaus
are establishing treatment facilities.
WPA and Health— The health and
economic menace from the floods of sul-
phuric acid which have been pouring into
Ohio and Potomac River tributaries from
abandoned coal mines, at the rate of two
million tons a year, has been reduced 60
percent by WPA mine-sealing operations,
according to a recent report from Ad-
ministrator Harry L. Hopkins. Besides
the damage to property from these acid
waters and the costs of treating them
for use, heavy losses have resulted, says
the report, from pollution of water used
for livestock, ruin of grazing lands and
the killing of fish. Although pollution
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
IF YOU SUFFER FROM
"ACID INDIGESTION"
Alkalize this fast "PHILLIPS" Way
Symptoms such as nausea, "up-
set stomach," gas, "acid head-
aches" due to acid indigestion
can now be relieved easily.
Just alkalize your excess stomach
acidity quickly by this fast
Phillips' method:
Take two teaspoons of Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia 30 minutes
after each meal, or two Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia tablets, each
tablet containing the equivalent
of a teaspoonful of the liquid
form. Almost immediately you
enjoy relief.
Always avoid "acid indigestion"
discomfort this easy way after
heavy meals or late hours.
Keep a bottle of genuine
Phillips' Milk of Mag-
nesia handy at home and
carry a box of Phillips'
tablets with you. They
cost only 25c per box.
MILK OF MA GNESiA
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodium)
After a thorough Investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
1 1935)
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Request
HYNSON WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md.
from active mines remains, the WPA in
two years has sealed more than a thou-
sand abandoned bituminous mines, there-
by giving employment to more than 5300
men at the peak, mostly unemployed
miners. Cost of the project so far is
slightly over $3 million.
Hay Fever— The New York State
Department of Health last summer made
extensive studies of hay fever producing
pollens in the air, in an attempt to find
havens within the state for sufferers. Sim-
ilar investigations, begun two years ago,
located some relatively free areas in the
Adirondacks. Studies were continued till
fall frosts, but results will not be ready
until late in the year.
Foreshadowing — On the basis of com-
putations made by a statistical bureau of
the Metropolitan Life Insurance Com-
pany, a recent article in the company's
Bulletin predicts that one out of every
nineteen children born during the three-
year period from 1929-31 eventually will
become incapacitated by mental disease
to a degree requiring admission to an
institution. An increase of 15 percent is
expected over the 1919-21 ratio of one
person in twenty-two. The increase in
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
357
ratio, it is pointed out, arises principally
from increased longevity. The rates of
first admission to an institution have de-
creased among females at practically
every age level, and among males up to
forty years of age.
Studies and Reports — A study of
hospital care for persons on relief by
Nelle L. Williams recently was pub-
lished by the American Public Welfare
Association. (Public Welfare and Hos-
pitals: a Study in Relationships. Price
50 cents from the association, 850 East
58 Street, Chicago.)
Recurring administrative problems
which appeared in the use of non-gov-
ernmental hospitals to hospitalize public
charges were: the basis of payment of
tax funds to voluntary hospitals, method
of determining basis of payment, author-
ity for establishing eligibility for hospital
care, the setting up of safeguards for
standards and quality of hospital service.
A study of public and private health
agencies of Colorado Springs and El Paso
County, Colo., is now under way, directed
by Ira V. Hiscock, professor of public
health at Yale University School of Med-
icine. The ultimate objective is improve-
ment of local health services.
The Massachusetts Department of
Public Health, aided by a five-year grant
from the Commonwealth Fund, has fin-
ished an extensive research and study of
treatment of pneumonia by sera. The
department has taken over the services
essential for the continued manufacture
and use of pneumonia serum as an essen-
tial part of its program. "Distribution of
this serum has become as integral a part
of the public health program of the state
as is distribution of other sera or the
supervision of milk or water supplies,"
says Commissioner Henry D. Chadwick
in reporting the completed study. (Final
Report of the Massachusetts Pneumonia
Study and Service, 1931-35, by Roderick
Heffron, M.D., and Elliott S. Robinson,
M.D. From the department, 1 Beacon
Street, Boston.)
In A Five Year Study of Tuberculosis
Among Negroes the National Tubercu-
losis Association has published a com-
prehensive report of work carried on with
the help of the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
Three population groups were considered,
southern rural, northern urban and south-
ern urban. The statistical picture, com-
plicating factors for these groups, and
the whole range of measures for con-
trol of tuberculosis among Negroes are
considered in some detail. An interesting
section on health education measures is
included. (Price 25 cents from the associ-
ation, 50 West 50 Street, New York.)
Nurses and Nursing
ADOPTION of the eight-hour sched-
ule for nurses and hospital employes
by the New York City Department of
Hospitals, which is now being put into
effect, is echoed in other parts of the
country. The American Nurses' Associ-
ation, which receives monthly reports
from professional nurse registries all over
the country, recently reported that it had
helped secure the eight-hour day for pri-
vate duty nurses in 850 hospitals in 41
states. Reports from registries show that
calls for nurses on an eight-hour sched-
ule increased from 24 percent in 1934 to
62 percent in 1936; while calls for nurses
on twelve-hour schedule dropped from
65 percent in 1934 to 29 percent in 1936.
Hospitals Commissioner S. S. Gold-
water, of New York City, is encounter-
ing difficulties in putting the eight-hour
schedule into effect because of a shortage
of available and properly qualified nurses.
In proposing the addition of $3 million
to next year's budget, for new staff, he
pointed out that recent restrictions of
nursing school activities and diversion of
graduate nurses to many other fields of
endeavor have made a shortage "which
might be described as acute" in nurse per-
sonnel available for city hospitals. The
chairman of the New York County Reg-
istered Nurses Association explained the
shortage as the result of "unattractive"
conditions and salaries in municipal in-
stitutions. "Until an increased appropria-
tion makes it possible for nurses to live
as other professional women do," she de-
clared, "there can be no improvement in
the situation."
A report of the advisory committee on
nursing in the city Department of Health
states the need for 250 additional nurses
in that department, as requested in its
proposed budget for next year. This need
is credited partly to greater public de-
mand for the services of the depart-
ment's nurses, as a result of recent health
campaigns and to increased attendance
at department clinics. New York is
eighth among the twelve largest cities
in the country in the number of public
health nurses per 100,000 population.
In a recent issue Modern Hospital
discussed editorially the nurse shortage
and the new eight-hour day and predicted
that the results will be felt in public and
private hospitals throughout the country.
"Hospitals cannot expect to work their
employes for fifty-two, fifty-six, or sixty
or more hours." The immediate problem,
the editorial concluded, is to obtain
enough money and enough personnel to
meet the new situation, but also there
must be "expansion of the good nursing
schools."
Public Health Pay— The 1937 re-
sults of the annual study of salaries in
public health nursing agencies have been
announced by the National Organization
for Public Health Nursing. The salary
most frequently paid in January 1937 to
staff [public health] nurses employed by
a private organization was $125 per
month. This was also true of nurses' sal-
aries paid by insurance companies and
health departments. Of those receiving
more than $125, over half were paid
$150 or more. In private agencies 43 per-
cent of the staff nurses received more
than $125 a month and 50 percent of
those employed by health departments
exceeded that amount. In 1937, 68 per-
cent of all public health staff nurses were
being paid $125 or more per month, as
compared with 59 percent in 1936. The
survey from which the figures were
drawn covered 449 agencies employing
8228 nurses.
Professional
DLANS for the Seattle meeting next
May of the National Conference of
Social Work are rolling up. The program
committee has already authorized the
organization of seven special committees
to arrange two programs each during
conference week. They are on Care of
the Aged; Interrelations of Employment
Insurance, Compensation Services and
Social Work; Medical Care; Prevention
and Treatment of Blindness; Social
Aspects of Children's Institutions; Social
Treatment of the Adult Offender; Sta-
tistics and Accounting in Social Work.
Gaining Ground — Recent pay in-
creases for employes of the Pennsylvania
Welfare Department have brought sala-
ries within the 1926 classification code
which was suspended during the depres-
sion years.
The campaign for higher pay for the
lower bracket employes of New York's
ERB, long and assiduously waged by the
Association of Workers in Public Re-
lief Agencies, was won early last month
when the Board of Estimate approved
increases of 10 percent for all cate-
gories up to $36 a week. Giving credit
"in very large measure" to the "sym-
pathetic attitude of Mayor La Guardia"
and to the "persistent untiring efforts" of
the ERB board and administrative of-
ficials, the AWPRA takes its own mead
of glory, "The union won that wage
increase. Without the union there would
have been no increase."
Relief Funds — The American Red
Cross, through its chapters, is accepting
contributions of money for relief work
among sufferers of all nationalities in
China. The national organization made
an initial appropriation of $30,000 for
the relief of Americans in war areas and
after evacuation to Manila and followed
it with an appropriation of $100,000 to
be used largely for hospital and medical
supplies to be turned over to the Chinese
Red Cross and other authorized agen-
cies. The American Red Cross does not
contemplate sending personnel to China
or making any special fund-raising effort.
The Parents' Magazine has under-
taken to raise a fund "for the impartial
relief of Spanish children," starting with
an initial contribution from the magazine
of $1000. Donations sent to the maga-
zine, 9 East 40 Street, New York, will
be forwarded to the American Red Cros^
for transmission to Spain.
Better Planners — The first organiza-
tion of its kind in this country, a plan-
ning research station, has been estab-
lished jointly by the Buffalo, N. Y., City
Planning Association and the University
of Buffalo. Walter Curt Behrendt, who
has been lecturer in city planning, hous-
ing and regional development at Dart-
mouth College will be director. On the
staff will be junior and senior interns
who "will engage actively under Dr.
Behrendt's direction in the conduct of
practical studies relating to principles and
problems of planning, with particular
reference to Buffalo."
Junior interns will be students in so-
cial and public administration enrolled in
the School of Social Work of the uni-
versity. Senior interns will be graduates
of accredited schools of architecture,
engineering and related technical subjects,
who look forward to housing administra-
358
THE SURVEY
tior and city and regional planning as
careers. Information at the station will
he at the disposal of all appropriate or-
ganizations in the city. A Rockefeller
Foundation grant is helping finance the
project. (Headquarters, City Planning
Association, 74 Niagara Street, Buffalo,
N. Y. ) ... Clarence Pierce, from the
Pennsylvania Relief Administration, a
new member of the School of Social
Work faculty of Buffalo University, is
supervising field work in public welfare
and public administration.
Church and Social Work — A new
department of social welfare has been
created in the Washington, D. C. Fed-
eration of Churches, sponsored jointly by
churches and social agencies. A profes-
sionally trained worker "with a religious
background," it is announced, will direct
the work, setting up an exchange to clear
cases of need among the cooperating
Protestant churches and in turn to clear
with social agencies. Each local church
will be urged to set up a "welfare coun-
cil" of its own and so far as possible to
be responsible for all cases of need with-
in its own fellowship. Cases which the
church is not equipped to handle will be
turned over to social agencies.
Exploratory work for the new plan
was done by Worth M. Tippy, recently
elected chairman of the Church Confer-
ence of Social Work.
Meetings — The American Public Wel-
fare Association will hold its second an-
nual round table conference December
10-12 in Washington, D. C The sec-
ond National Social Hygiene Day will
be observed February 2. ... The next an-
nual convention of the American Red
Cross will be held in San Francisco,
May 2-5, 1938 The sixteenth Inter-
national Red Cross Conference will be
held, not in Madrid as originally planned,
but in London, June 20-24, 1938.
The Personnel Research Federation
will hold its annual conference Decem-
ber 6-10 in New York. . . . The second
national conference on educational broad-
casting will be held November 29-Decem-
ber 1 in Chicago.
At its recent annual meeting, the New-
York State Nurses' Association decided
that, in future, it will meet every two
years, instead of annually, alternating
with the biennial meeting held by the
American Nurses Association and other
national organizations. The next meet-
ing, therefore — in case anyone keeps a
date-book that far ahead — will be in Oc-
tober 1939, at Buffalo.
Reader Interest — Every so often so-
cial agencies try to find out who reads
their house organs and why, try to test
reader interest — if any. At the end of its
second year Social Studies of St. Louis,
published by the research department of
the Community Council, queried its
mailing list on various points. One out of
four on the list responded, all asking
not to be dropped off. More than half
said that they kept a file of the publica-
tion and a goodly number that they
routed them on to board members. Each
copy of an issue, not counting those that
go to libraries, is seen, the editors esti-
mate, by no less than nine persons.
Christmas Seals! The Smil1ine town
crier is this year s
GREEjJLfcJGS I cheerful reminder
from the National
Tuberculosis As-
sociation that the
time to buy and
use Christmas
Buy and Use Them seals is here again.
This year marks
the celebration of thirty years of Christ-
mas seal sales. The national association
now reaches out through two thousand
affiliated state and local organizations.
Gifts and Foundations — A new
philanthropic foundation is in prospect
through the terms of the will of the late
George F. Baker, New York banker,
who set aside $15 million of his estate,
variously estimated at from $50 million
to $80 million, for that purpose. The net
income of the fund and, at the discretion
of his trustees, parts of the principal, are
to be devoted to religious, charitable, sci-
entific, literary or educational purposes.
The trustees are given broad discretion
in administering the fund but in case the
bequest should be held invalid for any
reason it might go to the Boy Scouts of
America or to the New York Hospital.
Should the bequest be held subject to
inheritance taxes such taxes must be de-
ducted from it and not taken from any
other part of the estate.
Another interesting gift recently re-
ported was that of $200,000 by Lucius
N. Littauer, New York glove manu-
facturer, to expand and reorganize the
National Hospital for Speech Disorders,
which will henceforth be known as the
Lucius N. Littauer Institute for Speech
Disorders. The initial gift will provide a
new and appropriate building. Further
gifts for endowment are assured. Mr.
Littauer's previous benefactions include
$1,100,000 in 1930 to establish the Lucius
N. Littauer Foundation "for better un-
derstanding among peoples," and $2 mil-
lion in 1935 to Harvard University for
a graduate school of public administra-
tion. The Littauer Foundation recently
granted $100,000 as an endowment fund
to the University in Exile of the New
School for Social Research in New York.
And speaking of big gifts, "an un-
named donor of great generosity" has
purchased and presented to the Presby-
terian Hospital, New York, a tract of
seven acres just south of its present sky-
scraper development. The plot, valued at
$1,750,000, has been occupied since 1856
by the buildings of the New York School
for the Deaf. The school recently pur-
chased some seventy-six acres near White
Plains where it will erect new buildings.
The Southern Education Foundation
was formed July 1, merging the John F.
Slater Fund, created in 1882, with the
Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, some thirty
years old. Both formerly were adminis-
tered by James Hardy Dillard, recently
retired. Arthur D. Wright directs the
new foundation.
New Home — Detroit's Franklin Street
Settlement, oldest in the city, has laid the
cornerstone for a new home which will
take it out of its fifty-seven-year old
brick building among the foundries near
the river front and give it a modern set-
ting for a wide community service. The
new building was aspired to in 1929. A
year later Mr. and Mrs. Edsel Ford do-
nated a site for it. Plans lagged however
until last June when a friend gave $100,-
000 on condition that an equal amount
be raised by August. The board went to
work and without pyrotechnics raised the
sum in about a month. The new building
on Charlevoix Street, two stories and
modern in design, will have facilities for
day nursery, summer camp, group and
club work with resident quarters for six
staff members and ten resident graduate
students.
Franklin Street Settlement began in
1880 as the Detroit Day Nursery. In
1901 it changed its name to accord with
its already enlarged program. Sarah
Selminski has been the head resident for
seventeen years.
Turn About — From Denmark where
American social workers and sociologists
are prone to turn for example and pre-
cept, recently came Viggo Christensen,
commissioner of public welfare of Copen-
hagen, "to conduct a six weeks' study of
the administration of social problems in
the United States." American welfare
officials received him cordially, if a bit
dubious as to what he might learn to
take back to Denmark. Mr. Christensen
was scheduled for a dozen lectures in
American cities during his visit.
Propaganda Clinic — To analyze
propaganda, the way it works in formu-
lating public opinion, its implications and
its dangers in American life is the pur-
pose of the new Institute for Propaganda
Analysis organized in New York under
distinguished auspices and financed, at
least in the beginning, by the Good Will
Fund, Inc., a foundation established by
the late E. A. Filene of Boston. The
president of the new institute is Prof.
Hadley Cantril of Princeton University.
Included on its board of directors and
advisory board are Charles A. Beard,
Paul Douglas, F. Ernest Johnson, James
T. Shotwell, Ned H. Dearborn, Eduard
C. Lindeman, Robert S. Lynd and others.
The institute defines propaganda as
NOVEMBER 1937
359
". . . expression of opinion or action by
individuals or groups deliberately de-
signed to influence opinion or actions of
other individuals or groups with refer-
ence to predetermined ends." Propaganda
conforms to democratic principles "when
it tends to preserve and extend democ-
racy; it is antagonistic when it under-
mines or destroys democracy."
Fellowships — For announcements of
research training fellowships and grants-
in-aid of research offered for 1937-38 by
the Social Science Research Council, ap-
ply to the secretary, John E. Pomfret,
230 Park Avenue, New York. Applica-
tions must be in by February 1, 1938,
and awards will be announced on May 1,
1938. Initial inquiry should be made well
in advance of February 1.
New Bulletin — The Adult Recreation
Project of the WPA in Boston has begun
publication of Recreation News, a twice-
monthly record of news and digest of ar-
ticles in that field, plus a few book re-
views. The editors announce that "it is
our purpose to keep those interested in
leisure time activities in touch with the
best that is printed." (Editor, Nevart
Najarian, 739 Boylston Street, Boston.)
Pursuit of Knowledge — London's
multi-millionaire automobile manufac-
turer, Lord Nuffield, has given a million
pounds to Oxford University to endow a
new college especially for postgraduate
research "in the field of the social
studies." An additional £200,000 was
given for medical research. Lord Nuffield
hopes to encourage social research "by
making easier the cooperation of aca-
demic and non-academic persons." Rent-
free rooms are to be provided for needy
students.
The Jewish Welfare Board of New
York on November 8 began its fifth an-
nual training program for leadership in
Jewish center group work. Seminars and
workshops in Jewish club work will be
Monday evening events until next March
21. (Jewish Welfare Board, 220 Fifth
Avenue, New York.)
In Print — Fortune Magazine has re-
printed the article, Unemployment and
Relief, featured in its October 1937 issue.
[See The Survey, October 15, page 318.]
It is available from the magazine offices,
135 East 42 Street, New York. Price 10
cents. . . . The Richmond, Va. Council of
Social Agencies has published a "direc-
tory of social forces" which differs from
the usual directory of local social agen-
cies in that it lists also all manner of key
organizations which might be of use to
the inquiring citizen. For example: swim-
ming pools, musical societies, newspapers,
laboratories, business associations. . . .
The New York Tuberculosis and Health
Association recently issued Volume I,
Number I of its Journal, to present gen-
eral news in public health and welfare.
Berns Photo
In its last edition of New State and
Local Departments of Public Welfare
the American Public Welfare Associa-
tion brings down to October 1 the
changes made by recently enacted laws.
From the association, 850 East 58 Street,
Chicago, price 25 cents.
People and Things
OETIRING from the Russell Sage
Foundation staff this fall is Clarence
Arthur Perry who with Lee F. Hanmer
"brought up" the foundation's recreation
department from
infancy to its pres-
ent adult stature.
Mr. Perry, whose
first job interest-
ingly enough was
as first principal
of a school in
Puerto Rico, has
been with "the
Sage" since 1909,
contributing lead-
ership and guid-
ance over a wide
range of activities turning for the most
part on the community movement and the
development of community resources. A
strong advocate of the wider use of the
school plant, his book and other writings
are authoritative on that subject. He was
on the staff of the social division of the
New York Regional Plan and worked
out and publicized the neighborhood unit
planning formula, a scheme of arrange-
ment for the family-life community. Dur-
ing the war he was an officer in the
Quartermasters Corps and formulated
the plan for the divisional supervision of
post exchanges in the National Army.
Mr. Perry has closed his desk at "the
Sage," but all that means is that now
he will have more time for his special
concerns in a field which already owes
him much.
New Yorkers — "My future is here,"
said Alice Salomon, when two days after
her recent arrival in New York she took
out her first citizenship papers. Exiled
from Germany Miss Salomon, dean of
international social workers, says, "I
hope to live in New York and write and
lecture. I have already started my auto-
biography in which I hope to tell of our
work in Germany for social security and
toward equipping women for the world."
Msgr. Robert F. Keegan, president of
the 1936 National Conference of Social
Work, is one of a number of New York
priests recently honored by the Vatican
by elevation from the office of Private
Chamberlain to the Pontiff to that of
Domestic Prelate. The Rev. William A.
Courtney, long president of the New
York City Board of Child Welfare, was
made a Private Chamberlain.
Donald S. Howard is on three months'
leave from the Charity Organization
Department of the Russell Sage Foun-
dation to serve as executive director of
the Board of Survey appointed by Mayor
La Guardia to develop plans and pro-
cedures for the transfer of the New
York City ERB to the Department of
Public Welfare. Hugh Jackson of the
State Charities Aid Association is serv-
ing as consultant to the board which is
headed by Peter Grimm as chairman and
includes among its members Mary E.
Dillon, Henry Bruere, Bailey B. Bur-
ritt, Maj. Benjamin Namm, Harold
Riegelman and others.
The National American Red Cross
has borrowed Alta E. Dines from the
New York AICP for three months to
help in working out new plans for Red
Cross nursing service. . . •. Sarah Swift,
recently with the New York Institute of
Child Guidance is now with the AICP as
psychiatric social worker. . . . The New
York City Chapter of the AASW has a
new executive secretary in Martha Malt-
man Perry, lately with the COS Ger-
trude Binder, a recent graduate of the
New York School of Social Work, has
joined the staff of the National Child
Labor Committee as assistant director of
the department of research and publicity.
New Jobs— The Westchester County,
N. Y. Children's Association has added
to its staff Elizabeth W. Clark, recently
with the personnel division of the New
York City ERB, to make a unique ex-
periment in social interpretation. Miss
Clark will study the changing aspects of
the work of the county Department of
Public Welfare as determined by state
and federal social security legislation
and will interpret them to the county-
wide committees of the association and
to the general public.
Nathan Straus of New York has been
named by President Roosevelt as admin-
istrator of the new U.S. Housing Au-
thority which will direct the $526 million
low cost program under the terms of the
Wagner housing act. Mr. Straus, a
former New York state senator and
NRA administrator, long has been con-
cerned with public housing, has studied
it abroad and at the time of his appoint-
ment was a member of the New York
City Housing Authority.
Richard K. Conant, field secretary of
the Massachusetts Conference of Social
Work and instructor in public welfare
administration of Boston University, has
been appointed acting director of the
division of social work of the Boston
University School of Religious and Social
Work. He succeeds Charles R. Zahniser,
who has resigned as director but remains
as professor of social science, on leave
during 1937-8 to work on a project to
develop a clinical case work program for
Boston churches.
Florence D. Stewart, formerly execu-
tive secretary of the Washington, D. C.
Housing Association, has been appointed
360
THE SURVEY
executive director of the City Housing
Council of New York, which is now in
new offices at 468 Fourth Avenue. Vera
C. Quinn is director of publicity and
education.
Newcomers to the disaster staff of the
American Red Cross are Roberta Mor-
gan, who was executive secretary of the
local Red Cross in Birmingham, Ala. and
later a relief director; and Marjorie
Workman, formerly with the West Vir-
ginia ERA and more recently assistant
area director for the Red Cross at Jeffer-
sonville, Ind.
Elected — The Association of Women
in Public Health at its recent annual
meeting elected: president, Sally Lucas
Jean of the World Federation of Educa-
tion Associations ; vice-president, Florence
Mirick Ross of Rhode Island College of
Education; secretary, Pauline B. Wil-
liamson, of the Metropolitan Life Insur-
ance Company; treasurer, Marjorie B.
Illig. of the American Society for the
Control of Cancer. . . . New president of
the Washington State Conference of So-
cial Work is Rabbi Adolph H. Fink of
Spokane. Vice-presidents are Margaret
Donley Hackfield of Seattle and Mrs.
Carl Irish of Bellingham.
Travelers Aid — New on the staff of
the Travelers Aid Society, Washington,
D. C., are Ellen Davis Kell from the
Boston Family Welfare Society and Alice
Elizabeth Jones, Cincinnati. . . . Also new
in Washington is Alice Marcella Fay
who went from New York to the
Instructive Visiting Nurse Society as
educational director. . . . Mary Harris
Cockrill from the Family Welfare Asso-
ciation of Davidson County, Tenn. has
succeeded Mary Leigh Smith as execu-
tive secretary of the Nashville Travelers
Aid Society Anita Tidball of Seattle,
Wash, is secretary of the Seattle Trav-
elers Aid Society succeeding Elizabeth
Leckenby Tampen, retiring.
Cancer Institute — Six scientists have
been named as a national Advisory Can-
cer Council, to guide the new National
Cancer Institute, which the seventy-fifth
Congress created and endowed with $10
million. [See The Survey, August 15,
page 260.] The appointees, named by
Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau,
include: Dr. Arthur H. Compton, au-
thority on X-ray; Dr. James B. Conant
of Harvard University; Dr. James
Ewing, director of cancer research at the
Memorial Hospital in New York; Dr.
Francis Carter Wood, director of the
Crocker Institute of Cancer Research
of Columbia University; Dr. Clarence C.
Little, managing director of the Ameri-
can Society for Control of Cancer; Dr.
Ludwig Hektoen, University of Chicago.
The institute will be maintained in the
U.S. Public Health Service with U.S.
Surgeon General Thomas Parran as ex-
officio chairman of the council. The build-
ings will be established on an estate in
Bethesda, Md., which was bequeathed to
the government for this purpose by the
late Luke Wilson, manufacturer, a can-
cer victim.
"New Schoolman" — Of much inter-
est to many people is the announcement
from Yale University of the appoint-
ment of Alvin Johnson, director of the
New School for Social Research, New
York, as director of general studies of
the Yale Graduate School and professor
of economics. It is good news for New
York that he is not breaking away whol-
ly from the New School but will divide
his time between the two institutions.
Readers of The Survey and Survey
Graphic know Mr. Johnson well, through
the "profile" of him, New Schoolman,
by Beulah Amidon, [see Survey Graphic,
March 1936, page 158] and through his
contributed articles, the most recent of
which was In This Real World of Ours
in The Survey for July 1937.
Catholic Charities— The Rev. Gerald
C. Lambert has been named diocesan di-
rector of Catholic Charities at Rochester,
N. Y. succeeding Most Rev. Walter A.
Foery, now bishop of Syracuse. . . . The
Rev. Edward Roberts Moore, director of
the division of social action of Catholic
Charities of the archdiocese of New
York, has been named rector of St.
Peter's, New York's oldest Catholic
church. . . . Eileen Ward, formerly ex-
ecutive secretary of Catholic Social Ser-
vice in Phoenix, Ariz, is a new instructor
in child welfare at the St. Louis Uni-
versity School of Social Work.
Honors — Doctors of Laws now are
Edith Abbott of Chicago University and
Clare M. Tousley of the New York
COS, both of them by way of Oberlin
College and its celebration of a century
of co-education. Miss Tousley is a
daughter of Oberlin, class of 1911. Can-
didates presented for honorary degrees
"offered living testimony," said President
Ernest H. Wilkins, "to the elevation of
women onto planes of scholastic accom-
plishment equaling that of men."
To Prof. Graham R. Taylor of Chi-
cago Commons and — since we're very
proud of it — of The Survey's staff of con-
tributing editors, the Rotary Club of
Chicago last month gave its merit award
of 1937. The ceremony took place at a
large luncheon and included the presen-
tation of a beautifully engrossed and
bound testimonial which was read by
Judge Charles M. Thomson, chairman
of the jury of award, with Professor
Taylor responding in his usual happy
manner.
At the recent testimonial dinner to
Dr. William Freeman Snow, general di-
rector of the American Social Hygiene
Association, a bronze medallion portrait
of Dr. Snow was presented to him. The
medallion will serve as the model from
which, from time to time, will be struck
the William Freeman Snow Medal for
Distinguished Service in Social Hygiene.
Awards will be made by a committee of
the board of directors of the ASHA.
Medical Men— Dr. Charles W.
Clarke, formerly medical director of the
American Social Hygiene Association,
and "loaned" to the New York City De-
partment of Health two years ago to
organize a bureau of social hygiene, has
returned to the ASHA with the title of
executive director. . . . Dr. Frederick
W. Parsons, New York State commis-
sioner of mental hygiene, has resigned
after more than thirty years in the state
service, the last eleven of them as com-
missioner. He is succeeded by Dr. Will-
iam J. Tiffany, who has been superinten-
dent of the Pilgrim State Hospital at
Brentwood, N. Y. . . . Dr. Frank J.
Jirka of the University of Illinois Col-
lege of Medicine, has resigned his posi-
tion as health commissioner of Illinois.
. . . Dr. Harvey Gushing, recently re-
tired and now emeritus of both Yale and
Harvard University Medical schools, has
been appointed director of studies in the
history of medicine at the Yale school.
. . . Dr. J. Rosslyn Earp, for six years di-
rector of public health for New Mexico,
has .been appointed to the New York
State Department of Health. As medical
editor in the division of public health ed-
ucation, he will supervise collection and
editing of materials for publication.
Deaths
MRS. HARRY L. HOPKINS, in Washing-
ton in early October, at the age of thirty-
seven after a long illness. Before her
marriage to Mr. Hopkins in 1931 she
was engaged in social work in New York.
HARRY HERMANN GRAHAM, since 1929
superintendent of the Berkshire Indus-
trial Farm, Canaan, N. Y., one of the
best known and most progressive of the
private institutions for delinquent boys.
CLARENCE VORHEES WILLIAMS, of
Evanston, 111., nationally known in child
welfare work and head of the Illinois
Children's Home and Aid Society. Of
him Mary Irene Atkinson, director of
the Child Welfare Division of the U.S.
Children's Bureau, says: "Mr. Williams
began work with children in the period
when placement in foster homes was be-
ing recognized as increasingly important
as a substitute, in part, for long time in-
stitutional care. . . . Integrity of pur-
pose, devotion to the task at hand, re-
spect for the point of view of others,
interest in improving professional stand-
ards in order that children might be
served better, were the strands which
made up the pattern of his professional
performance."
NOVEMBER 1937
Readers Write
Why Can't We Have An Orphan?
To THE EDITOR: Recent discussion and
criticism in popular magazines show
widespread misunderstanding of the prac-
tices of orphanages and other child car-
ing agencies. Critics, generally couples
who have vainly besieged the agencies
for children to adopt, have been unable
to reconcile the fact of large numbers of
children in orphanages with the fact that
enough childless couples are asking for
these children to depopulate the institu-
tions overnight. Says one indignant
crusader, "Thousands of children in in-
stitutions would be better off in homes.
Thousands of couples want them. But
the institutions will not release them."
Strange as it may seem, managers of
these institutions know of this demand
and thank God for it, since they know
these anxious couples to be —
Grains of that superior salt
That keeps the world from spoiling.
The reasons why this demand cannot
be more nearly met are not far to seek.
In large measure the children in the
orphanages are a floating population en-
trusted for a time only to the agencies.
Where this is not the case an orphanage
might well be asked to show cause for
the permanency of its inmates.
In a certain institution well known to
the writer there were, at the beginning
of 1935, fifty-seven children. During the
year fifty-eight new ones came in while
sixty were released — forty of them to
relatives and others who had rightful
claims on them. Eighteen were adopted
by non-relatives leaving fifty-five at the
end of the year. Had the census been
taken at that time these fifty-five would
have been counted among the "prisoners
of charity." They were far from being
prisoners however since all but a few of
them went out of the orphanage the fol-
lowing year to be replaced by others who
were a part of the continuous stream of
children which for thirty years has passed
through this home.
Along the banks of this stream there
is always a fringe, a few cases which
cannot be disposed of immediately. Dur-
ing the years under review, there were
two who were mentally incompetent and
who were placed in a state institution;
a half-Negro baby with an eye defect
and questionable ancestry on both sides;
one with a congenital injury which
doomed him to live, if he lives, without
muscular control. Families could be
found to take all — or most — even of
these. But there are some things which
cannot be left wholly to the emotions.
An agency which would let kind-hearted
couples thus endanger their family lives
or the rights of children later born to
them, by taking on life burdens such as
attach to incurability, physical or mental,
would deserve to have its charter re-
voked.
There is much to be said for the foster
home idea which today is receiving new
emphasis. But children can be exploited
in private homes as well as in institu-
tions. Those who need confirmation
might read Baa Baa Black Sheep, Kip-
ling's tragic story of boyhood and blind-
ness, to know the bitterness that can
come to children in foster homes.
Meanwhile those who are charged
with the responsibility for homeless chil-
dren and who daily face the obligation
ot placing them wisely in foster homes
may well pray for wisdom and fortitude
in so choosing and refusing that those
to whom the prize of a child shall be
given shall not curse them, ere the child
be grown. For every ten children whom
anyone would have any right to give
away or adopt may there be one hundred
and ten families who want them, for
thus shall human nature be justified.
WILLIAM WORTHINCTON
Pacific Protective Society
Yakima, Wash.
"Mobility in Trouble"
To THE EDITOR: Elizabeth Wickenden's
article, Transiency=Mobility in Trouble
in The Survey for October was welcome,
as coming from the former assistant di-
rector of transient activities, FERA.
With her final conclusions I am in hearty
agreement; namely, that any future ap-
proach should consider remedial measures
in terms of specific handicaps to be over-
come.
However, from the first it has been my
belief, and that of those associated with
me, that the "remedial approach in terms
of specific handicaps" must first be direct-
ed toward relief which the first phase of
the transient program provided. The re-
lief phase was not an end in itself.
Incidentally, the transient program did
the spade work which made the "prob-
lem (s) of mobility in trouble" visible to
the naked eye of government and the citi-
zen. That it was labeled "federal" in the
early days instead of being integrated
with other phases of state relief, financed
in part by federal funds, was the result, as
I have pointed out elsewhere, of the pre-
occupation of federal and state adminis-
trators with the Civil Works Administra-
tion, and since the state transient director
could not gain access to his state adminis-
trator he had to "go to Washington" for
advice and guidance.
Miss Wickenden's criticism of this ad-
ministrative difficulty is justified but it was
not the fault of the plan as drawn. She is
right when she says that those of us who
have worked closely with the program
not only have the privilege, but the obli-
gation, to look back critically and dispas
sionately on past experience. The program
was not perfect. The service of the em-
ployment exchanges should have been
available in transient camps, and was
asked for, but there were no jobs, nor
was there effective functioning of the ex-
changes during the life of the transient
program — they, too, were in the making.
My great regret is that no sharing of
experience was made possible by the
federal authorities with state and local
officials, or the "brain trusters" or "pres-
sure groups," which hoped to see a con-
structive solution of the problem. The un-
happy fact is that the transient program
was thrown overboard at a time when the
evolution and integration into the slowly
developing program of public welfare ad-
ministration would have been possible.
That water is now over the dam.
We appear now to have arrived at the
point of agreement that mobility of peo-
ple is an essential factor in the develop-
ment of these United States; that it must
be given surer direction and guidance by
government from this point onward;
that ways and means must be found to
minimize or prevent the handicaps (legal,
health economic and social) of "mobility
in trouble" ; and that many of the per-
manent departments of government, fed-
eral, state and local, have a responsibility
which must be shared in any effort look-
ing to this end.
That the U.S. Department of Labor
and the U.S. Public Health Service now
are working upon various phases of this
perplexing problem gives assurance as to
future progress, for which we are thank-
ful. ELLEN C. POTTER, M.D.
Chairman, Committee on Care of
Transient and Homeless, New York
"Nurses in the Making"
To THE EDITOR: In connection with the
scenes from the motion picture, Nurses
in the Making, which appeared as a
frontispiece in The Survey for October,
your readers might like to know that
this film may be rented by any interested
organization. It is a two-reel, sixteen
millimeter, silent film which takes about
half an hour to show. The rental price
is $3 per showing, plus transportation
costs. A lifetime lease may also be ar-
ranged by qualified organizations.
A booklet, Suggestions for Use, may
be obtained with the film at an additional
cost of 25 cents. This contains informa-
tion about nursing, reading lists, and
other material helpful in planning pro-
grams. Bookings may be arranged or fur-
ther information obtained from the
Division of Visual Experiment, Harmon
Foundation, 140 Nassau Street, New
York. ALICE ROBERTS
362
THE SURVEY
Book Reviews
King Cotton's Subjects
STORY OF KING COTTON, by Harris Dick-
son. Funk and Wagnalls. 309 pp. Price
$2.50 postpaid of The Survey.
TTHERE are plenty of men who know
the story of cotton so far as that
story is the addition of statistics, the
comparison of prices and the measuring
of trade. But Harris Dickson knows cot-
toi as he might know a man — or rather
two men, Colonel Woodville and Wash
Johnson — and a mule. Cotton in the delta,
cotton in the South, cotton in the world
is their story and Mr. Dickson, artist
among statistics and story-teller unop-
pressed by the weight of the cotton carry-
over, has kept rich, human and enter-
taining this story of a commodity from
the seed to the mill.
Mr. Harris makes no pretense at being
either the last agricultural economist or
the final rural sociologist speaking the
ultimate word on the fiber. But without
making any pretense at all he has made
alive the men whose lives are bound to
cotton, both as operators of plantations
of many acres who must keep in touch
with the sensitive trade of the world and
as tenants on such plantations who in
hope or despair, starvation or extrava-
gance, work for a settlement which gen-
erally is little more than subsistence. Mr.
Harris has written a picture of cotton,
not a critique of cotton economy or the
morals of the men who labor in it. His
chapters on crop control, cooperatives,
exports, tenant farming, and tenant-land-
lord conflict are less satisfying than such
grand tales as that of the wreck of the
Rosa May by a rampaging Mississippi
or the various ones about Wash John-
son and other colored brothers who are
almost as much a part of cotton as the
stalk.
Mr. Harris' book naturally takes its
place among those that are for present
reading rather than, future reference.
The Brookings Institution may beat him
at the squeezing of significance out of
statistics but not all the learned societies
can approach him in seeing cotton as its
growers see it and as he veraciously sees
its growers. •
Raleigh, N. C. JONATHAN DANIELS
Out of the Mists
THE MIND OF MAN— THE STORY OF MAN'S
CONQUEST OF MF.NTAL ILLNESS, by Walter
BromberR. M.D. Harper. 321 pp. Price $3.50
postpaid of The Survey.
\/IEN'S minds, like their bodies, have
been subject to the long crooked
road of developing culture, in which
medicine was "at first magic, then prayer,
finally an art, and only recently a science."
Traces of the past, like strata in a rock
formation, remain today, at least in popu-
lar thinking and doubtless also in pro-
fessional anachronisms. Dr. Bromberg
writes vigorously and with authority oi
the pre-history of psychiatry and its re-
markable development in the past genera-
tion or two on a scientific level. His
book should be of much interest to in-
dividuals who wish to understand queer
quirks in others, or preferably in them-
selves; and, more importantly, to those
who wish the light that a clear and com-
petent view of the past throws on mass
madness in the world of the past and of
today. It gives a particularly clear ac-
count of Freud's contribution to modern
thought as well as to professional tech-
niques. Dr. Bromberg finds that the de-
veloping science of recent decades has be-
gun to lay a foundation for advance in a
field still almost unexplored, "social psy-
chiatry— whose surface has hardly been
scratched." He points out that the ex-
citements of developing knowledge have
tended to make even psychiatrists forget
that "no one lives in a social vacuum."
There is no royal road to cure, nor is a
road likely to develop. But in this emi-
nently readable, even exciting story of
the long climb upward from magic to-
ward science, Dr. Bromberg shows that
men have gained ground from which they
may advance out of some of the mists of
terror, ignorance and cruelty that have
been their habitat in the past.
MARY Ross
Problem Drinkers
TO DRINK OR NOT TO DRINK, by Charles
H. Durfee. Longmans Green. 212 pp. Price $2
postpaid of The Survey.
T^OR many, "to drink or not to drink"
is nearly an equivalent statement for
"to be or not to be"; escape through
alcohol has become to these personalities
a necessity which affronts the family and
society.
These sincere, and at the same time
quite cleverly written chapters develop
the thesis that alcoholism is a symptom
of psychological illness, best remedied by
emotional and mental readjustments
worked out by the patient, largely through
the medium of appropriate occupational
therapy under friendly supervision in a
favorable social environment. While Mr.
Durfee demonstrates that home treat-
ment of problem-drinkers is sometimes
successful, his discussion contains abund-
ant evidence favoring "time out" and a
change from the patient's usual surround-
ings as almost essential for initiating and
facilitating the psychological reconstruc-
tion that needs to be achieved. Several
weeks or months usually are required in
this process of mental liberation and re-
orientation. In his scheme of treatment
no use is made of physical restraint.
Alcohol is not immediately withdrawn,
but through the skillful reduction of the
drinker's emotional tension drink speedily
becomes unnecessary. The glass of whis-
key at the bedside goes untouched after
the second or third night. A small farm,
with its numerous opportunities for con-
structive occupation, has proven a favor-
able psycho-social site for this type of
adult re-education school. Such therapy
is highly individual and ordinarily there
are less than a dozen resident patients.
These are in all stages of rehabilitation
and tend to influence each other with
mutual benefit.
Based on adequate experience, this
book is an exceptionally clear statement
of the principles involved in the treat-
ment of men and women who have
found their propensity for alcohol out of
bounds. The author brings a hopeful,
wholesome attitude to this age old prob-
lem, and through invention and adapta-
tion has supplied new names and terms
which when used in the discussion tend
to lift our thinking out of the old ruts.
He has made a significant contribution to
mental hygiene which laymen, social
workers and mental therapists will find
practically useful whether their problems
are theoretical, personal or professional.
Yale University WALTER R. MILES
The Long Hard Road
CHILD WORKERS IN AMERICA, by Katha-
rine Du Pre Lumpkin and Dorothy Douglas.
McBride. 321 pp. Price $3.50 postpaid of The
Survey.
is a readable review of the child
labor question in its economic and
social setting. Further, it is a challenge
not only to the opponents of child labor
legislation, but also to those willing to
take a superficial view of the problem or
to be content with half-way remedies.
The book is based chiefly on the results
of statistical and legal research and on
the field work of public and private
organizations. But it is saved from aca-
demic lifelessness by first hand studies
of child laborers made by the authors
in 1931 and 1932. The subject is di-
vided into three parts: Children on
the Market, Demand and Supply, Pros-
pects for Control. The wage earn-
ing of children in industry and agricul-
ture, in street trades, and in industrial
homework is discussed. The authors re-
view laws and administrative methods,
with their striking variations from state
to state ; and analyze personal and so-
cial factors involved in child labor.
The book was completed before 1937
and here and there details of the picture
it gives have been modified by recent leg-
islation. On the whole, such changes have
been slight. Last winter, for example,
North and South Carolina, important
textile states, adopted a sixteen-year age
NOVEMBER 1937
363
minimum for employment in factory oc-
cupations. Ten states now have such a
standard.
The authors are convinced of the
urgent need not only for child labor
reform in this country but also for basic
economic change and for more adequate
social security measures. They hold that
effective, widespread labor organization
and political activity on the part of labor
groups are necessary to the elimination
of child labor. The authors believe that,
beginning with ratification of the child
labor amendment "the fight for adequate
child labor legislation has necessarily to
center about the struggle for federal as
opposed to mere state legislation." They
predict a long up-hill struggle even after
ratification is completed, before this coun-
try achieves legislation with sufficiently
broad coverage to reach the most ex-
ploited groups of American child laborers.
BEULAH AMIDON
The Land and the People
RECENT TRENDS IN RURAL PLANNING,
by William E. Cole and Hugh Price Crowe.
Prentice-Hall. 379 pp. Price $3.50 Rostpaid of
The Survey.
TT is said that a reporter recently asked
• Henry Wallace if it would not be bet-
ter to turn the land of the United States
back to the Indians. The Secretary of
Agriculture was prepared with a reply.
He pointed out that if we were to hand
the land back to the Indians it would be
only fair that we should first take steps
to put it back into the same condition
as when we received it from them.
This book tells something of the begin-
ning of rural planning in the United
States, which, if carried through, should
do a good deal to improve the land that
we have treated so badly and also to im-
prove the quality of the people who live
on it. Many planners do not consider
both the people and the land. Fortu-
nately, these authors do.
Writing from the University of Ten-
nessee, Messrs. Cole and Crowe point
out that in the year 1929 one branch of
the federal government was making plans
to build a large dam on a river in that
state. At the very same time another
agency of the federal government was
approving plans for the construction of
a million dollar bridge that would have
been submerged if the dam had been
built. Such illustrations give point to the
need for planning.
We have here a treatment of an old
word that gives it new and expanding
meaning. The work opens with a
Philosophy of Rural Planning. There fol-
lows a consideration of the economic
bases of rural planning, and a statement
of the human resources, which actually
are taken up before all matters pertain-
ing to land use and settlement. A chapter
on Planning for Effective Rural Social
Welfare refers to a variety of types of
social work. There is also a chapter on
rural crime control and the peculiar dif-
ficulties which surround its improvement.
Many other aspects of rural life are
treated, including the recent progress in
rural electrification.
New York
BENSON Y. LANDIS
To the Last Pencil
PLANNING FOR COLLEGE, by Max McConn.
Stokes. 267 pp. Price $2 postpaid of The
Survey.
\\7 HAT every dean knows is told to
the public in this book by Dean Mc-
Conn of Lehigh University. In fact, "for
the price of admission" it reveals the
whole stock in trade of deans or directors
of "committees on admission."
A great deal of information is pre-
sented, so simply and clearly that it as-
sumes on the part of the reader no
knowledge of the process of preparation
for entrance into any kind of college.
Intended for boys and girls in high-
schools or preparatory schools and for
their parents, it will be extremely help-
ful to them, as well as to deans and ad-
visers of students who are not in close
touch with the college tradition or with
any particular college or university.
Planning for College primarily is prac-
tical, not theoretical, and intends to be so.
Yet the most valuable contribution of the
book is in the analysis in the first chap-
ter, "Who ought to go to college?" Dean
McConn here sets up as standards: "a
fairly high degree of bookish aptitude; an
awakened intellectual interest in some-
thing; a fairly high degree of self-mastery
or capacity for self-direction." After the
student is led to decide whether he should
go to college, and which college, he is
informed on costs, preparation, admission
plans and so on. Nothing is omitted from
the lists of external equipment, not even
"the pencil sharpener and a dozen good
pencils" for one's room. Doubtless as a
result of the questions which the author
has had to answer many times, nothing
is left to the imagination or good sense
of the prospective student. At any rate,
the reader gains an impression that the
writer is accustomed to deal tolerantly
and kindly with young people and to do
a thorough job of being helpful.
Vassar College C. MILDRED THOMPSON
Quakers in Penology
THEY WERE IN PRISON— A HISTORY OF THE
PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY, 1787-1937, by
Negley K. Teeters. Winston. 541 pp. Price $3
postpaid of The Survey.
just another book about prisons,
nor merely a puff for the Prison So-
ciety's hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, this
is a fascinating combination of history,
penology and the personalities of old Phil-
adelphia.
Many names of importance appear in
this story of The Philadelphia Society for
Alleviating the Miseries of Public Pris-
ons (now the Pennsylvania Prison Soci-
ety). Among them are Benjamin Frank-
lin, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Roberts Vaux
and the Wistars. In the introduction,
Harry Elmer Barnes says, "Few realize
that America gave to the world the mod-
ern prison system. Fewer still know that
it was chiefly the product of the human-
ity and ingenuity of the American Quak-
ers. ... In May 1787, there was formed
what became the most influential organi-
zation in the whole history of modern
penology."
It was the atrocious conditions in cer-
tain Philadelphia jails which compelled
public-spirited citizens to band together
for action. Their work included giving
necessary food and clothing, separating
the sexes, and combating idleness — as
well as helping to found the famous East-
ern State Penitentiary and originating
institutions for juveniles.
The society was in touch with similar
efforts throughout the world. Even the
great John Howard, himself a sufferer
from the brutalities of foreign prisons,
sent letters of encouragement to the Phil-
adelphia Society. And the society followed
his lead in proclaiming that reformation
should be made a principal object of im-
prisonment.
The reader of this meaty volume will
discover much that is entirely new, and
will rejoice to find the familiar portions
so freshly presented. He will realize
also that the unselfish zeal of the soci-
ety's early days repeats itself today un-
der its president, Francis Fisher Kane.
ANNA WHARTON MORRIS
Jamestown, R. I.
Knowledge and Practice
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN' MEDI-
CINE, by Richard Harrison Shryock. Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press. 442 pp. Price $4
postpaid of The Survey.
TV/TOST histories of medicine are a
series of biographies, big beads and
little, strung on a tenuous thread of
narrative. Professor Shryock, an his-
torian, not a physician, has followed the
lead which Dr. Henry E. Sigerist has
begun to make familiar to American
readers. The medical sciences and the
arts and institutions of medical practice
have a life history of their own, but like
different plants that grow in the varied
soils of a countryside, they are nourished
by and depend upon the social and
economic organization of society.
Professor Shryock's book — not light
summer reading — is stronger in dealing
with the course of events than with the
analysis of problems; but it is clear,
documented and informing. The sci-
ences of medicine and the social status
of the physician have had their ups and
downs during the last few centuries.
"To what cause," wrote a physician in
1858, "are we to attribute the diminished
respectability of the medical profession in
364
the estimation of the American public?"
Medicine as a science and medical service
as an art have greatly advanced their
social status since that time. New dis-
coveries have increased enormously the
power to prevent and cure disease. And
despite the fact that present knowledge
is applied only to a fraction of the people
who would benefit by it, widespread hu-
man benefits have been obtained and im-
portant effects produced upon the age
constitution of the population and the or-
ganization of social life. Professor
Shryock makes clear that the practical
application of medical knowledge de-
pends in increasing measure upon social
organization. In every decade closer re-
lations appear between the medical sci-
ences and the social sciences as means of
planning; and • between medical, social
and economic agencies as instruments of
execution.
New York MICHAEL M. DAVIS
New York's Good Causes
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL AGENCIES: NEW
YORK 1937-38. Prepared under the direction
of the Committee on Information Services of
the Welfare Council of New York City, Anas-
tasia H. Evans, editor. Columbia University
Press. 503 pp. Price $3 postpaid of The
Survey.
T N this volume if in no other place is
the impressive number and infinite
variety of New York's social agencies
made visible to the naked eye. Essential
information is given on the location, pur-
pose and auspices of no less than 1318
organizations for "divers good causes,"
with devices of arrangement to facilitate
general and special reference. The larg-
est classification is under family welfare
with 450 agencies listed as engaged in
work related in one way or another to
families. The five major fields of child
welfare list 366 agencies.
It is interesting to note that New York
has twenty-eight agencies that have been
on the job for more than a hundred
years and 166 for more than fifty years.
GERTRUDE SPRINGER
Federal Fact Finding
GOVERNMENT STATISTICS. A REPORT OF
THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT STATISTICS
AND INFORMATION SERVICES. Social Science
Research Council. 174 pp. Price $1 postpaid
of The Survey.
DROMPTLY upon taking office as Sec-
retary of Labor in March 1933,
Frances Perkins initiated an important
governmental reform by appointing a
technical committee to study the then
stagnating Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There was need for critical examination
of the whole statistical program of the
federal government. The new adminis-
tration was interested, partly because
large expansion of statistical services was
required for the prospective expansion of
government functions. With the assur-
ance of cooperation on the part of the
Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce,
Labor, and Interior, the Committee on
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
NOW REPRINTING!
SOCIAL WORK YEAR BOOK, 1937
Edited by RUSSELL H. KURTZ
In spite of the largest first printing we have given any book, the 1937 SOCIAL
WORK YEAR BOOK had to be rushed back to press. Do you have your copy
of "the largest body of knowledge about social work in all its phases in the
least space and at the least cost anywhere available in social work" (Transient)?
No new edition until 1939. Price, $4.00
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
130 East 22d Street
New York
MACMILLAN
Announces -
ALCOHOL: One Man's Meat -
By EDWARD A. STREGKER, co-author of "Discovering
Ourselves" and FRANCIS T. CHAMBERS, Jr.
In this book the authors present an interestingly written summary of
the problem of alcoholism as seen by a physician in the course of
practice. General considerations, treatment and physiological and nutri-
tional factors occupy an important place in this book.
Ready in January $2.50*
THE CONQUEST OF CHOLERA
AMERICA'S GREATEST SCOURGE
By J. S. CHAMBERS, M.D.
In this fascinating story the author dramatizes the advance of medicine
from miasms as a speculative philosophy to microbes as a scientific
fact. The story of Asiatic Cholera, from its outbreak in the United
States in 1832 to its final conquest in 1892, is the moving drama of
cholera's march and a nation's distress, when bewildered physicians
courageously but impotently fought a not understood pestilence.
* Probable prices. Ready in January $5.00*
60 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK
Government Statistics and Information
Services was shortly organized for such
a general study under the auspices of
committees of the American Statistical
Association and the Social Science Re-
search Council. Financed from private
sources, the two committees functioned
together over a period of nineteen
months, with a research staff consisting,
at the peak, of more than fifty persons.
Chief attention was given to the two prin-
cipal statistical agencies, the Bureau of
the Census and the Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics, but the inquiry embraced the sta-
tistical work of some fifty other bureaus,
scattered among seven executive depart-
ments and twenty-five independent
agencies.
The report describes the investigations
conducted in various bureaus and records
the major recommendations. In the proc-
ess it presents the most valuable available
guide to the federal government's vast
and complex statistical organization. The
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
365
record of reorganization is concrete evi-
dence of the large accomplishment of this
undertaking. One indication of the ac-
ceptance of the critical services of the
committees is the list of twenty-six com-
mittee or staff members who joined the
staffs of seventeen of the agencies studied.
Among many important services, those
potentially most significant related to
the establishment of the Central Statis-
tical Board as a continuing agency for
planning and coordinating the govern-
ment's statistical work. Two earlier at-
tempts to supply this need proved abor-
tive; a third produced an interdepart-
mental committee with neither program
nor power. The new board, recommended
early by the committee, was promptly
established by executive order, worked
with the committee, and has since con-
tinued the committee's research, planning
and advisory service. It should be added
that a fickle Congress in 1935 gave it an
assured life of five years, but in 1937
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
Library Service
AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 120
North Michigan Ave., Chicago. To aid in
the extension and improvement of library
service.
Child Welfare
BOYS' CLUBS OF AMERICA, INC., 381 Fourth
Avenue, N.Y.C. National service organization
of 291 Boys' Clubs located in IBS cities. Fur-
nishes program aids, literature, and educa-
tional publicity for promotion of Boys' Club
Movement ; field service to groups or individ-
uals interested in leisure-time leadership for
boys, specializing with the underprivileged.
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, 2 Park Avenue,
New York City. Incorporated in 1910 and
chartered by Congress in 1916 for the pur-
pose of developing the character of boys and
training them in their duties as citizens.
Cubbing, younger boys' program, 9-11 ;
Scouting, 12 and upward ; Senior Scouting,
16 years and up. Scouts are organized in
Patrols and Troops. Cooperates with schools
and churches, fraternal orders and other
civic groups. Walter W. Head, President :
Dr. James E. West, Chief Scout Executive.
BERKSHIRE INDUSTRIAL FARM, Canaan.
New York. A national, non-sectarian farm
school for problem boys. Boys between 12
and 14 received through private surrender
or court commitment. Supported by agreed
payments from parents or other responsible
persons, in addition to voluntary contribu-
tions. For further information address Mr.
Byron D. Paddon, Acting Supt., or the New
York Office at 101 Park Ave., Tel : LEx. 2-3147.
CHILD WELFARE LEAGUE OF AMERICA—
C. C. Carstens, director, 180 E. 22nd Street,
New York City. A league of children's agen-
cies and institutions to secure improved
standards and methods in their various fields
of work. It also co-operates with other chil-
dren's agencies, cities, states, churches, fra-
ternal orders and other civic groups to work
out worth-while results in phase of child
welfare in which they are interested.
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF DAY NURSER-
IES—130 East 22nd Street, New York City.
To federate day nurseries in the U. S. and
assist them to establish and maintain ap-
proved standards of care.
NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE— 419
Fourth Ave., N.Y.C. Promotes child labor
legislation, state and federal ; conducts in-
vestigations ; advises on administration :
maintains information service.
AMERICAN LEGION NATIONAL CHILD WEL-
FARE DIVISION, 777 North Meridian Street,
Indianapolis, Ind. Three-phase program : Ed-
ucation ; legislation for benefit of all chil-
dren ; temporary material relief to children of
veterans of World War. Emma C. Puschner,
Director.
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR CRIP-
PLED CHILDREN, Elyria. Ohio. Paul H.
King, President; E. Jay Howenstine, Execu-
tive Secretary. Promotes organization of na-
tional, state, provincial and local societies for
crippled children. Aids in development of their
programs. Assists in drafting and securing the
passage of legislation in behalf of cripples.
Maintains a Bureau of Information with loan
library service. Conducts yearly an Easter
Crippled Children Seal Campaign. Bulletins.
"The Crippled Child" magazine, bimonthly, $1
a year.
Community Chests
COMMUNITY CHESTS AND COUNCILS. INC.
— 1B6 East 44th Street, New York. Informa-
tion and consultation about cooperative plan-
ning and financing of social work through
chests and councils of social agencies.
Health
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL
HYGIENE, INC.— Dr. Arthur H. Ruggles,
president; Dr. C. M. Hincks, general direc-
tor ; Clifford W. Beers, secretary ; BO West
BOth Street, New York City. Pamphlets on
mental hygiene, child guidance, mental
disease, mental defect, psychiatric social
work and other related topics. Catalogue of
publications sent on request. "Mental Hy-
giene." quarterly, $3.00 a year.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR PUBLIC
HEALTH NURSING— BO W. BOth St., New
York. Dorothy Deming. R. N., Gen. Dir.
Advisory service, statistics, monthly maga-
zine.
NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS ASSOCIATION-
BO West BOth Street. New York, Dr. Kendall
Emerson, managing director. Pamphlets of
methods and program for the prevention of
tuberculosis. Publications sold and distributed
through state associations in every state.
American Review of Tuberculosis, medical
journal. $8.00 a year ; and Monthly Bulletin,
house organ, free.
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE— A
Clearing House, cooperating with social work-
ers in referring indigent mothers to medically
directed birth control clinics in 41 states, in-
cluding 17 centers in Greater New York. In
areas lacking centers, qualified physicians are
available. Phone or write: BIB Madison
Avenue, New York City. WIckersham 2-8600.
President: Clarence Cook Little. Medical
Director: Eric M. Matsner, M.D.
New York City
THE BIRTH CONTROL CLINICAL RESEARCH
BUREAU, 17 West 16th Street ; MARGARET
SANGER, Director; has added evening ses-
sions, Wednesday and Thursday evenings,
from 7 to 9 P.M., for the benefit of mothers
who work and cannot come to the Clinic
daily from 9 to 4.
Penology
THE OSBORNE ASSOCIATION, INC., 114 East
30th Street, New York, N. Y. Telephone
CAledonia 6-9720-9721. Activities :— Collects
information about penal institutions and
works to improve standards of care in penal
institutions. Aids discharged prisoners in
their problems of readjustment by securing
employment and giving such other assistance
as they may require. Wm. B. Cox. Executive
Secretary.
National Conferences
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SOCIAL
WORK— Solomon Lowenstein, President, New
York; Howard R. Knight, Secretary. 82 N.
High St., Columbus, Ohio. The Conference is
an organization to discuss the principles of
humanitarian effort and to increase the
efficiency of social service agencies. Each
year it holds an annual meeting, publishes
in permanent form the Proceedings of the
meeting, and issues a quarterly Bulletin.
The sixty-fifth annual convention of the
Conference will be held in Seattle, Washing-
ton, June 26 - July 2, 1938. Proceeding*
are sent free of charge to all members upon
payment of a membership fee of $5.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JEWISH
SOCIAL WELFARE— Harry L. Glucksman,
President; M. W. Beckelman, Secretary, 67
W. 47th St., New York, N. Y. Organized
to discuss Jewish life and welfare, Jewish
social service programs and programs of
social and economic welfare. The 193S
Annual Meeting will be held in Washington.
D. C. beginning May 28. The Conference
publishes a magazine, Jewish Social Service
Quarterly, a news bulletin, Jewish Confer-
ence, and Proceedings of its Annual Confer-
ence. Minimum Annual Membership Fee $2.
Religious Organizations
COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS—
105 East 22nd Street, New York City. The
Inter-Denominational body of 23 women's home
missions boards of the United States and Can-
ada uniting in program and financial respon-
sibility for enterprises which they agree to
carry cooperatively ; i.e. Christian social service
in Migrant labor camps and U. S. Indian
schools. President. Mrs. Millard L. Robinson ;
Executive Secretary, Edith E. Lowry ; Associate
Secretary, Charlotte M. Burnham ; Western
Field Secretary. Adela J. Ballard ; Migrant
Supervisor, Gulf to Great Lakes Area, Mrs.
Kenneth D. Miller.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN,
INC.— 1819 Broadway, New York City. Mrs.
Arthur Brin, President ; Mrs. Maurice L.
Goldman, Chairman Ex. Com. ; Mrs. Marion
M. Miller, Executive Director. Organization
of Jewish women initiating and developing
programs and activities in service for for-
eign born, peace, social legislation, adult
Jewish education, and social welfare. Con-
ducts bureau of international service. Serves
as clearing bureau for local affiliated groups
throughout the country.
NATIONAL BOARD. YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRIS-
TIAN ASSOCIATIONS, 600 Lexington Ave.,
New York City. An international Christian
woman movement devoted to service for
women and girls and the attempt to help
build a society in which the abundant life
is possible for every individual.
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF YOUNG MEN'S
CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS— 347 Madison
Avenue. New York City. Eskil C. Carlson,
President ; John E. Manley, General Secre-
tary. A federation of 1123 local associations,
through state and area councils, for Chris-
tian character education among youth. Meets
annually to determine service projects and
budget for cooperation with local member
organizations in program emphasis and in-
terpretation, fiscal operations, etc. Empha-
sizes lay-professional cooperation, group and
club activity, and self-governing programs
of physical, social and religious education,
public affairs, international education and
special cooperative projects, citizenship, etc.
Specialized work among transportation, army
and navy, student, colored, rural, and certain
other groups.
Racial Adjustment
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC., with its
44 branches improves social conditions of
Negroes seeking "not alms, but opportunity"
for them. Secures and trains social workers.
Investigates conditions of city life as bases
for practical work. Publishes OPPOR-
TUNITY, Journal of Negro Life. Solicits
Kifts. 1133 Broadway. New York. N. Y
Negro Education
TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE. Tuskegee Institute.
Alabama. Founded by Booker T. Washing-
ton. High school and college both ac-
credited. Curricula designed to prepare
Negro students to meet the vocational and
social needs of successful living. F. D.
Patterson , President.
Recreation
NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION—
316 Fourth Ave., New York City. To bring
to every boy and girl and citizen of America
an adequate opportunity for wholesome,
h«ppy play and recreation.
DIRECTORY RATES
30 Cents a Line
Per Insertion
On a Twelve Time
Contract
icies. ence. Minimum Annual Membership Fee J2.
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
366
DIRECTORY OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS
Civic, National, International
National Red Cross
THE AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS—
Administered through National Headquar-
ters in Washington, D. C., and three Branch
Offices in San Francisco, St. Louis and
Washington, D. C. There are 3711 local
chapters organized mostly on a county basis.
Services of the Red Cross are : Disaster
Relief, Civilian Relief, First Aid and Life
Saving, Home and Farm Accident Preven-
tion Service, Home Hygiene and Care of the
Sick, Junior Red Cross, Nursing Service,
Nutrition Service, Public Health Nursing,
Volunteer Service and War Service.
Industrial Democracy
LEAGUE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY—
Promotes a better understanding of problems
of democracy in industry through its
pamphlet, research and lecture services and
organization of college and city groups. Ex-
ecutive Directors, Harry W. Laidler and
Norman Thomas, 112 East 19th Street, New
York City.
Why Not Celebrate
THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY
OF SURVEY ASSOCIATES
by listing your organization
in the Directory?
Copy for the
December Midmonthly
should reach us by
November 25th.
Foundations
VMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE BLIND.
INC. — 15 West 16th Street, New York. A
national organization for research and field
service. Activities include : assistance to state
and local agencies in organizing activities
and promoting legislation ; research in legis-
lation, vocations, statistics, and mechanical
appliances for the blind ; maintenance of a
reference lending library. M. C. Migel, Presi-
dent ; Robert B. Irwin, Executive Director.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION— For the Im-
provement of Living Conditions — Shelby M.
Harrison, Director; ISO E. 22nd St., New
York. Departments: Charity Organization,
Delinquency and Penology, Industrial Stu-
dies, Library, Recreation, Remedial Loans,
Social Work Interpretation, Social Work
Year Book, Statistics, Surveys. The publica-
tions of the Russell Sage Foundation offer
to the public in practical and inexpensive
form some of the most important results of
its work. Catalogue sent upon request.
has reduced its opportunity for service by
a drastic cut in appropriation. An appen-
dix of the report gives valuable, but
apparently incomplete, correlated lists of
bureaus and subject matter comprised in
the governmental statistical system. An-
other appendix lists the published papers
and more important unpublished memo-
randa which relate to the work of the
committee. There is an index. The re-
port is a highly useful but brief treatise
on a very important subject.
New York RALPH HURLIN
Twenty Years Better
A CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR SCHOOLS
OF NURSING, prepared by the Committee on
Curriculum of the National League of Nursing
Education. Published by the league. 689 pp.
Price $3.50 postpaid of The Surrey.
'T'WENTY years ago the National
League of Nursing Education pub-
lished Curriculum for Schools of Nurs-
ing, prepared under the leadership of
M. Adelaide Nutting, a book destined to
influence greatly the course of study of-
fered by schools of nursing. Its theory
was also destined to undergo growth and
change with the maturing of a philosophy
of nursing education. Now, two decades
after its initial appearance, a second com-
plete and significant revision has been
issued, this time with the title, A Cur-
riculum Guide for Schools of Nursing.
The revision, made under the leadership
of Prof. Isabel M. Stewart of Teachers
College, Columbia University, represents
the cooperative effort not only of the
members of the National League of
Nursing Education but of representatives
of the National Organization for Public
Health Nursing, the Association of Col-
legiate Schools of Nursing, the American
Journal of Nursing, and other interested
nursing groups and individuals.
The Curriculum Guide defines no mini-
mum standards, and presents no program
for the many schools of nursing which
are educational institutions only by virtue
of their name. It has been devised to aid
"those schools that are definitely com-
mitted to sound and progressive educa-
tional policies and that are reasonably
well equipped to conduct a nursing edu-
cation program that is adequate for the
needs of today."
With this goal in mind, the Committee
on Curriculum, responsible for the study,
recommends that requirements for ad-
mission to nursing schools be advanced
to from one to two years of education
beyond highschool. It suggests, through
the elimination of all non-educational
duties, some shortening of the period of
training and some reduction of long hours
of work, without sacrificing essential
parts of the curriculum. It advises the
extension of the preclinical period to
eight months, thus increasing the time
devoted to courses in theory. Finally, it
would enrich the content of the curricu-
lum not only by enlarging upon the bio-
logical and physical sciences but by adding
a substantial amount of material from
the social sciences with the subject ma-
terial arranged in fewer and larger
divisions than formerly so that courses
may be presented functionally.
If the recommendations appear far
from adequate to those acquainted with
professional training in some other fields,
it must be recalled that they represent
marked progress over those of only
twenty years ago. What is most impor-
tant is the fact that the general trend
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
367
in nursing education, as indicated by this
book, seems to be in the right direction.
ESTHER LUCILE BROWN
Russell Sage Foundation
Biography for Beginners
NEGRO BUILDERS AND HEROES, by Ben-
jamin Brawley. University of North Carolina
Press. 315 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of The
by Ben-
jamin Brawley. University of North Carolina
Press. 3
Surrey.
A GAINST the common ignorance
^^ about Negro achievement and the
fog of prejudice responsible for it, there
is perhaps no other antidote than the
painstaking — ?nd sometimes painsgiving
— rehearsal of such individual achieve-
ment as the Negro has made "in spite of
handicap." Such is this book's reason for
being; and for those who still need to be
convinced of the Negro's possibilities, it
will be serviceable and educational. But
as a series of thumbnail sketches of
prominent Negroes in all lines of en-
deavor, from slave times to the present
day, the book is inevitably sketchy and
disconnected, with a frequent admixture
of the trivial, and can do little to deliver
the average reader from the angle of
missionary appeal and professional op-
timism. It will hardly lift him from the
elementary plane of the success story
and "Exhibit A" sociology. Really en-
lightened students of racial progress or
race relations will call for sounder his-
torical perspective, more competent de-
tail, and will wish to see the correlation
of this scattered material and exceptional
achievement to the mass condition of the
Negro, the historical background of the
particular generation, and the prevailing
trends. It is not that we expect biog-
raphy to do the service of sociology, but
too much of the vital significance of
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISEMENTS
Rates: Display: 21 cents a line, 14 agate lines to the inch. Want advertisements
6ve cents per word or initial, including address or box number. Minimum charge,
first insertion, $1.00. Cash with orders. Discounts: 5% on three insertions; 10% on
six insertions. Address Advertising Department.
ALOON3&N 4-7«, SURVEY MIDMONTHLY J,iwEAY8oRk9thciTTV
WORKERS WANTED
SOCIAL WORKERS— (a) Psychiatric; state
mental hygiene clinic ; two years' experience
required ; East, (b) Medical social worker to
take charge of outpatient department ; uni-
versity hospital, (c) Public health nurse with
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Labor Case Book
PROBLEMS IN LABOR RELATIONS, by
Herman Feldman. Macmillan. 346 pp. Price
$2.75 postpaid of The Survey.
A LTHOUGH this volume may prove
useful in other types of cases, it is
intended primarily for use by students
training for professional work in labor
administration. A problem book in the
literal sense, it consists of a series of
problem cases covering many phases of
labor relations, with emphasis on those
subjects of particular interest to labor
managers and executives.
The problems are grouped under five
main heads: 1. Wages, Wage Methods,
and Wage Administration; 2. Hours,
Working Conditions and Labor Regula-
tion; 3. Old Age, Insecurity, and Unem-
ployment; 4. The Personal Environment;
5. Group Relations, Unions, and Labor
Law. Each case presents a realistic situ-
ation, ranging from that of liberal manu-
facturer who is being forced by competi-
tion to cut wages, to that of an employer
of truck drivers who denies the right
of the majority rule in collective bar-
gaining because he declares the union
to be a racket controlled by outsiders who
have "muscled in." According to the
author, some of the cases are intended to
be provocative, "to disturb the conserva-
tive in his beliefs and force him to think
over his ideas anew; to disturb the pro-
gressive and lead him to analyse more
closely the basis of his faith." Each case
is followed by a series of questions de-
signed to bring out the essential elements
of the material presented.
This work enjoys the merits and suf-
fers the demerits inherent in the method.
It is true that the case or problem
method is a means of bringing discussions
out of the clouds into the realm of prac-
tical affairs about which action must be
taken. It is, therefore, likely to be realis-
tic, if the selection of material is typical.
In this the author has made a worth-
while contribution. However, a volume of
short case descriptions such as this is an
exceedingly difficult means of conveying
to the student the broad phases of labor
relations and their manifold connections
with the basis of the economic system.
The book tends at times to be meticulous
and tedious. The author expressed his
hope that by beginning with the nar-
rowed, local problem, the student's inter-
est and understanding of the broader is-
sues will be extended. While there is
much in the method and in this demon-
stration to commend, this reviewer has
doubts of the realization of that hope.
LOIS MACDONALD
New York University
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ANDERSON, advertising manager.
DECEMBER 1937
CONTENTS
VOL. LXXIII No. 12
Frontispiece 370
Public Medical Care
Pronouncements and Progress MICHAEL M. DAVIS 371
Chicago's Unemployables CLARA PAUL PAIGE 373
The Business of Leadership SANFORD BATES 375
A New Day for a Juvenile Court WENDELL F. JOHNSON 377
Social Agency Boards and How to Serve on Them
2. In a Changing Scene CLARENCE KING
378
380
25 Survey Years — 25 to Go
The Common Welfare 382
The Social Front 384
Public Assistance • Relief • Among the States • Concern-
ing Children • Labor Legislation • The Labor Front •
Against Crime • Compensation • Schools and Education
• Old Age Insurance • Welfare Budget • Against Disease
• Health and Sanitation • Professional • Junior League •
People and Things
The Pamphlet Shelf 394
Readers Write 395
Book Reviews 396
© Survey Associates, Inc.
• The great problem of the feeble minded is
that there are so many of us. — The late
JOSEPH H. CHOATE.
So They Say
• You can't preach adult education unless
you practice it. — FREDERICK P. KEPPEL, presi-
dent, Carnegie Corporation.
• Social reform is the final objective of all
social work. — EDITH ABBOTT, School of Social
Service Administration, University of Chicago.
• I am willing to stop worrying about the
unemployed when there are no more unem-
ployed— but not until then. — HARRY L. HOP-
KINS, WPA administrator.
• We forget that we deal with young men.
We think we see red when what we really see
is green. — DEAN HERBERT E. HAWKES, Co-
lumbia University to Association of American
Colleges.
• Men who are radicals more often talk in
their sleep than the non-radicals. Women
radicals talk in their sleep less often. — MAU-
RICE H. KROUT, Chicago City Junior College,
to American Psychological Association.
• The thinker's search for truth has been tra-
ditionally bound up with formal techniques of
exposition in which the logical couplings of
thought called for as much attention as the
matter thought about. — THOMAS H. BENTON
in Common Sense.
• A new profession comes into being when-
ever there is a widespread demand for special
expert services which can be performed only
by those who ha ye mastered a mass of tech-
nical knowledge and are able to apply it inde-
pendently in novel situations and in unforeseen
emergencies. — CHANCELLOR SAMUEL PAUL
CAPKN, University of Buffalo.
• I believe that America is dance hungry. —
ANNE MORGAN, New York.
• Most of our questions of public policy are
matters of more-or-less rather than of yes-or-
no. — Editorial, The Christian Century.
• Our present system of relief cannot con-
tinue indefinitely any more than it can stop
suddenly. — MAYOR LA GUARDIA, New York.
• I have always thought that it would be
interesting if some insurance company would
work out the expectancy of life of a theory. —
M. MAXWELL REED at N. Y. Times National
Book Fair.
• Unless job security can be provided, social
security is impossible except in the form of
benefits and grants. — PROF. WILLIAM HABER,
University of Michigan, to Illinois Conference
on Social Welfare.
• The best guarantee of permanency of the
general old age pension is the fact that the
number of taxpayers who expect to die young
is never enough to win an election. — DAVID
CUSHMAN COYLE, in Age Without Fear.
• Ministers who stand before the public and
urge the police to make more arrests for
moral delinquencies for which the nightstick
is no salvation, are only complicating the
problems of American youth. — ANNA M.
KROSS, city magistrate, New York.
• I think that a man ought to be hung on
a tree if he advocates overthrow of govern-
ment.— GOVERNOR FREDERICK P. CONE, Florida.
• Personality isn't what a person does but
what a person doesn't. — DR. JAMES S. PLANT,
director, Essex County Juvenile Clinic, New
Jersey.
• To follow the course 'of good books in
library circulation is to gain new faith tt>
democracy. — ALVIN JoHNSON1, The New School
for Social Research.
• Mother love is the only element with which
I have come in contact as a college president
which makes me think less of human nature.
— WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON, president, Smith
College.
• How to establish an equilibrium between
the equality of educational opportunity and
the inequality of human ability is one of the
most intricate problems of our civilization. —
EDWARD C. ELLIOT, president, Purdue Uni-
versity.
• Our present complex social structure re-
quire_s the development of a new social virtue,
not in contradiction but in addition to the
traditional ideals of personal accomplishment,
independence and undertaking spirit. This
new group ideal is the sense for order and
cooperation. — DR. FRANZ ALEXANDER, Insti-
tute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago.
"Care of the Postmaster"
Uncle Sam's First
Unemployment Census
Wide World
The postman equips himself with cards to leave at every door on November 16
Harris & Ewing
A report card reaches John D. Biggers, administrator of the Census
Pictures, Inc.
"Are you:
(a) Totally unemployed and want work?"
Wide World
"You can get help in answering these questions from any postal employe"
THE SURVEY
DECEMBER 1937
VOL. LXXIII NO. 12
Public Medical Care
PRONOUNCEMENTS AND PROGRESS
By MICHAEL M. DAVIS
THIS is a report, not an "article." It is a report of
progress, with some notes of the processes whereby
medical care supported by local, state or national
taxation has become a subject for anxious consideration by
administrators and for the constructive deliberation of
physicians.
Before the depression, we had annually some $400 mil-
lion worth of public medical care in this country, mostly
in hospitals supported by government units and mostly
from the tax funds of the states, cities and counties. This
does not count tax expenditures for public health depart-
ments. Nobody knows exactly how much money is spent
out of taxes for medical care today, but we do know that
more care is furnished at the public expense than was fur-
nished ten years ago, and especially that more home care
is supplied for people who cannot themselves pay for it.
Welfare officers of cities, counties and states are now try-
ing to adjust organization and services to post-depression
demands. The recent declaration of a national committee
of physicians in favor of the expansion of public medical
care is evidence that progress may be found in pronounce-
ments as well as in action.
The welfare administrator of a western state wrote me
recently to say, in substance: "We are trying to organize
a system of public medical care. What is the best sys-
tem?" There is no answer to that question. There is
experience, and there are numerous lessons from that ex-
perience; but the tablets of the law that will tell anybody
just what to do cannot be displayed for the simple reason
that they have not yet been written. The welfare officer
of a middle-sized eastern city called on me a while ago with
a sheaf of administrative problems: "Our public medical
services are a headache. Home care is furnished by a panel
of physicians on which every licensed doctor can serve if
he wants to, and from which every patient can choose the
physician he wants. But as it's working out, costs and
complaints are mounting." Her problems had to be met
with questions rather than solutions : What medical su-
pervision have you ? How strong and diligent is the com-
mittee of your county medical society? What is your method
of paying the physicians and of relating payment to services ?
Would the experience of some counties in Iowa, or of the
city of Windsor, Ontario, be helpful to you?
In 1933-35, the Federal Emergency Relief Administra-
tion developed a system of home medical care for families
on relief which was widely but far from universally ap-
plied throughout the country. When federal funds were
withdrawn from direct relief and therefore from medical
care in the states and localities, there were frequent local
reductions in the amount of medical care supplied, but by
and large we have not descended to a pre-depression level
in the amount of home care.
The hospitals also have entered the picture. Only about
400 cities or counties throughout the country have general
hospitals supported by the local governments, and even
in these places the number of hospital beds rarely is suffi-
cient to care for all the people who cannot pay hospital
bills. Voluntary hospitals in these communities have com-
monly carried a portion of this load, and in several thou-
sand cities and counties which have no governmental hospi-
tals, the voluntary hospitals have had to carry all of the
load. Consequently, government funds, chiefly from cities
and counties, to a less extent from the states, have been
used in increasing measure to pay non-governmental hos-
pitals for care furnished to public charges. Examples of
this, as in New York City, existed for many years before
the depression, and the policy has been extending.
Sir Arthur Newsholme remarked of Great Britain:
"The efficiency of medical aid is reduced by inadequacy
in its provision and by discontinuity in the work of the
different doctors undertaking it." If Sir Arthur were to
explore the American situation during his present visit to
this country, he would find American illustrations exceed-
ing any English imaginings. The hastiest survey will show
states and localities in which different types of medical care,
though needed in the same community by the same families,
are severally supplied by different bureaus or departments
of governments. Again, medical care for a particular group,
children for example, may be furnished by a specialized
agency uncorrelated with other medical and social work
371
Principles and Proposals by the Committee of Physicians
PRINCIPLES
1. That the health of the people is a
direct concern of the government.
2. That a national public health policy
directed toward all groups of the popu-
lation should be formulated.
3. That the problem of economic need
and the problem of providing adequate
medical care are not identical and may
require different approaches to their
solution.
4. That in the provision of adequate
medical care for the population, four
agencies are concerned: voluntary agen-
cies, local, state and federal govern-
ments.
PROPOSALS
1. That the first necessary step toward
the realization of the above principles
is to minimize the risk of illness by
prevention.
2. That an immediate problem is pro-
vision of adequate medical care for the
medically indigent, the cost to be met
from public funds (local and/or state
and/ or federal).
3. That public funds should be made
available for the support of medical edu-
cation and for studies, investigations
and procedures for raising the standards
of medical practice. If this is not pro-
vided for, the provision of adequate
medical care may prove impossible.
4. That public funds should be available
for medical research, as essential for
high standards of practice in both pre-
ventive and curative medicine.
5. That public funds should be made
available to hospitals that render service
to the medically indigent and for
laboratory and diagnostic and consulta-
tive services.
6. That in allocation of public funds
existing private institutions should be
utilized to the largest possible extent
and that they may receive support so
long as their service is in consonance
with the above principles.
7. That public health services, federal,
state and local, should be extended by
evolutionary process.
8. That the investigation and planning
of the measures proposed and their ulti-
mate direction should be assigned to
experts.
9. That the adequate administration and
supervision of the health functions of
the government, as implied in the above
proposals, necessitates, in our opinion,
a functional consolidation of all federal
health and medical activities, preferably
under a separate department.
The subscribers to the above prin-
ciples and proposals hold the view that
health insurance alone does not offer
a satisfactory solution on the basis of
the principles and proposals enunciated.
for the same families. Hospital services are likely to be un-
correlated with home services and to be operated by div-
isions of state or local governments which are unconnected
with either the welfare or the health departments. There
are states in which a dozen different bureaus or depart-
ments are administering different kinds of medical care
for different categories of people without any central plan
or organized relationship. In counties and cities the lack of
coordination is equally apparent.
However, correctives are beginning to be applied. Studies
by several state planning boards and similar bodies, and
advisory services by official and voluntary agencies within
the states and nationally, are beginning an inevitable move-
ment towards more coherent organization. Of much sig-
nificance is the appointment by the American Public Wel-
fare Association this autumn of a consultant in medical
care, Dr. Gertrude Sturges, who, it may be anticipated,
will assemble facts which will help state and local welfare
officials everywhere.
There has been an important forward movement of
medical societies in this matter. Before the depression a
few medical societies, chiefly in agricultural counties, had
undertaken definite responsibilities, under the governmental
authorities of the area, for providing medical care for the
"indigent." During and since the depression, many more
local medical societies and many of the state societies have
undertaken to organize and supervise home medical care.
This increase in the organized participation of physicians
has brought problems to public administrators, but it is
most wholesome. From the standpoint of service, as dis-
tinguished from that of organization, the physician is of
course the central figure in this picture.
During this same period of expanding and confused ac-
tion, and rather independently thereof, physicians have been
giving more attention than ever before to the public rela-
tions of medicine. The controversies which followed the
reports of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care
in 1932 have been developmental as well as acrid. A report
of the Michigan Medical Society, after a survey of condi-
tions in that state made under its auspices in 1933, included
constructive plan-making. More striking evidence of the
same sort was offered the American people on November
7, 1937, when a committee of some 430 physicians, includ-
ing many of national distinction, made public the "princi-
ples and proposals" which are quoted on this page. A state-
ment of this Committee of Physicians, issued at the same
time as the "proposals," contains significant information
concerning their origin and intent.
... As a contribution to the discussion of the subject of
medical care in the United States, this self-appointed group of
medical men, finding themselves in agreement, has formulated
certain principles and proposals anent such care. . . . They
hope that these principles and proposals may suggest the lines
along which effort may be made by voluntary, local, state
and federal agencies to improve medical care.
It is recognized that the medical profession is only one of
several groups in which "medical care" is of vital concern.
Close cooperation between physicians, economists and sociolo-
gists is essential. Nevertheless the medical profession should
initiate any proposed changes, because physicians are the
experts upon whom communities must depend. Unless the
medical profession is ready to cooperate with these other
groups, they cannot expect to play successfully the part which
they should play, nor can they expect to enlist the sympa-
thetic understanding of legislative bodies. . . .
It is possible that the "principles and proposals" might
have received little public attention last month had they
not been issued, like the report of the Committee on the
Costs of Medical Care five years earlier, amidst contro-
versy. In October the Journal of the American Medical
Association attacked them as threatening the medical pro-
fession with the dangers of state medicine, and accused the
signatories of being "unthinking," if not disloyal. In the
teeth of this weighty official criticism, the theses of the
Committee of Physicians nevertheless were nailed to the
public wall. Controversy incites publicity. The "proposals"
were front page news. The public reaction, to judge from
the newspapers, has been unfavorable to the attitude of the
official medical journal. Of more than a score of editorials
which I have seen in papers from many parts of the coun-
try, all, with a single exception, commend the Committee
of Physicians either for the subject matter of their state-
ment, or for their courage in issuing something construc-
tive, or for standing for the principle of freedom of discus-
372
THE SURVEY
sion within the organized medical profession. The one ex-
ception is the Christian Science Monitor.
Behind the AMA's criticism lies more history. The re-
port of the American Foundation, issued early last spring
[see Survey Graphic, May 1937, page 270] summarized the
opinions of over two thousand physicians on the public
relations of medicine and led to the preparation of the
principles and proposals, first by a small informal group of
medical men. The New York State Medical Society offi-
cially adopted resolutions which were modified from
but bore considerable resemblance to the proposals, and
requested the endorsement of the resolutions by the Ameri-
can Medical Association at the annual convention last
June. The New York proposal was tabled and a resolution
adopted of a general character stating the readiness of the
American Medical Association to cooperate with any gov-
ernmental or other appropriate agency "upon direct re-
quest." Conferences with federal officials, including Presi-
dent Roosevelt himself, were held by some of the physicians
who had drawn up the original "principles and proposals."
Requests for additional signers were privately circulated so
that over 400 signatories had been secured by November 7.
The general reader may inquire whether this is more
than a tempest in a professional teapot. It is much too soon
to judge whether any permanent medical current has been
set in motion. Moreover, the "principles and proposals" are
very general in character. They may be taken to mean much
or little in the way of increased public responsibility for
medical care. The statement, for example, fixes no position
one way or the other regarding health insurance. All that
is said is the truism that "health insurance alone does not
offer a satisfactory solution." The experience of every Euro-
pean country long ago demonstrated that. Only time will
show the relation between pronouncement and action. Cer-
tainly it is significant, however, that a large number of
distinguished physicians have united upon a program which,
however its details may work out in the future, at least
contemplates constructive dealing with the public in behalf
of the improvement of medical services and their extension
to those who need them.
Chicago's Unemployables
By CLARA PAUL PAIGE
Director of Family Service, Chicago Relief Administration
WHEN we of the Chicago Relief Administration
were called upon to divide the people on the relief
rolls into "employable" and "unemployable" we
recognized our fallibility in classifying any human being as
unable to earn. The cold terms "employables" and "unem-
ployables" were used, therefore, with mental reservations
and with no assurance of the finality of our judgment.
In the beginning of our use of the terms the employables
greatly outnumbered the unemployables on the rolls. By
the spring of 1937, however, the proportion of unemploy-
able cases to the whole relief load was greater than during
the first years of the depression and was increasing. It was
clear that we needed to know more about them. Why were
they unemployable? Could they be made employable, and
how? Therefore, at the direction of Leo M. Lyons, com-
missioner of relief of the City of Chicago, the statistical
department of the Relief Administration, under E. E.
Ferebee, planned a study of the unemployable cases receiv-
ing relief from the CRA. Called in consultation were the
family and the medical services of the CRA and an advis-
ory committee from the community, with membership in-
cluding representatives of the private social agencies, the
Chicago Council of Social- Agencies and the faculty of
schools of social service. The facts which it was decided to
seek were drawn from the case records of the Chicago Relief
Administration by the workers having first hand knowledge
of the families concerned.
As cases are opened and closed daily, a date was set
(May 15, 1937) upon which all unemployable cases open
in the agency were to be listed for study. On that date
we had 39,973 cases, containing 87,043 persons, reported
as unemployable. Schedules for the inquiry were prepared
for the adult members of each family and careful instruc-
tions were issued for their use. The completed schedules,
after being checked by members of the statistical service
assigned to the district office for that purpose, were sent
weekly to the central statistical department for tabulation.
Definitions agreed upon, to determine into which classi-
fication a given case fell, were :
An employable case is one having one or more employable
persons.
An employable person is one between eighteen and sixty-
four years of age who is working or able to work, who is not
engaged in the care of a family or attending school and whose
health or behavior habits are of such a nature that employ-
ment would not be detrimental to his health or safety or to
the health or safety of others who associated with him.
An unemployable case is one having no employable person.
We realize that this definition is narrow in the light of
present day conditions. It does not include among the un-
employables the many mature workers — under sixty-five,
it is true, but old from the standpoint of industry, who
are let out of jobs they have held for years; the worker
who has lost his skill because of continuous unemployment ;
the worker whose particular skill is no longer in demand
because of technological changes in industry. These, if able-
bodied, we class as "employables."
We undertook the study knowing that figures could
never tell the whole story and that individual situations
which seem to fall in categories have a way of escaping
them. For example, there was — call him John Brown. He is
armless, born that way, and unemployability seemed the
proper classification for him. But having ambition and a
good intellect he has finished his pre-legal training at a
YMCA college and is now in a law school, his books and
tuition charges provided by the Board for Vocational Edu-
cation. Or consider Joe Smith — which isn't his name
— now twenty-four, an infantile paralysis cripple since he
was two years old, for whom a course of training in a com-
mercial art school will terminate in an assured position.
In spite of the fallibility of judgment in such cases, we
began the study of this group, unemployable by rule of
thumb, scanning case by case to see if they were properly
classified. We wanted the study to tell us more than the
DECEMBER 1937
373
situation of the moment, and hoped to overlook no single
fact that might be useful in future planning. We tabulated
by nativity and color, by sex and age, and by the reasons
that seemed the primary cause of unemployability. Were
these people ill or crippled, were they too old to hope for
future work, or were they just needed in the home?
Over half of the unemployable cases were so classified
for social reasons or because of their age. Some of these
were young people who, although of working age, were
still in school. Others were mothers caring for their chil-
dren or for an invalid in the family; or they were preg-
nant women, or men and women beyond the age when it
was at all probable that work might be secured. Sixty-five
years was the age set as the dividing line between probable
and improbable employment. In the classification the 16,325
homemakers caring for children or invalids (or both)
bulked largest; persons over sixty-five numbered 8160 and
children in school, 664.
Excepting its older members, we recognize this group
of unemployables as a changing one. The mother may be
released when her children no longer need her care in the
home, or the sick member of the family may recover, or
the young people graduate or discontinue school attendance
and start earning.
It was not this group, therefore, that was subjected to
further analysis but the group classified as unemployable
because of some mental or physical disability. It numbered
22,729 persons.
Our first step was to list carefully, under eighteen dif-
ferent headings, the disabilities given as primary reasons
of unemployability. The largest number of cases, 4194 or
over 18 percent, fell under the heading, Injury or Defect.
Next came 3327 cases, approximately 14 percent, under
heart diseases. Mental and nervous ailments accounted for
only 10.2 percent of the group. Almost half, 48.2 percent
were known to be under medical care. A small number, 6
percent, did not require such care and the needs of the re-
mainder were not known. The possibility of unmet medical
needs always is a challenge to an organization such as ours.
Experience has taught us that "referring for medical care"
does not always mean that the client receives that care.
Sometimes, with all arrangements made for him to go to a
clinic, he simply does not go. Perhaps he prefers a private
physician, or another clinic, or lacks faith in doctors. Per-
haps the weather was bad or perhaps he shrank from the
inevitable waiting in dispensaries. In any case there are un-
predictable factors with which even a relatively adequate
medical program must reckon in the long task of trying to
get under medical care the many who doubtless need it.
Next we considered how long these disabilities might
continue. We found that about 40 percent of the group
were permanently and about 7.5 percent temporarily in-
capacitated. For all the rest, .over half the group, the
probable duration of the disability was not known.
When it came to estimating the possibilities of rehabili-
tation for these mentally and physically disabled people it
was the judgment of the case workers who knew the fam-
ilies and the conditions of their disabled breadwinners,
that the prospects of ever working again were hopeless for
8356 of them, about one third of the group. For a smaller
number, 3865, there was a possibility that, recovered from
illness, equipped with the proper medical appliance or given
some retraining they again might earn their livelihood. For
10,511 persons the prognosis was "doubtful."
Because of the probability that the prospects of reem-
ployment were greater for those who had not been too long
away from any sort of paid work, we analyzed the work
history of the group. Interestingly enough we found that
57 percent had been employed at some time during the past
five years, the men in larger numbers than the women.
About one fourth had not worked during the last five years,
and a much smaller number, 18 percent, had never worked.
Our unemployables were not young. As we moved down
the age groups from decade to decade their numbers de-
creased. The number was largest between fifty-five and
sixty-five years. There were 7933 of this age, 6000 between
forty-five and fifty-five ; approximately 5000 between thirty-
five and forty-five and in the span between eighteen and
thirty-five years of age, only 3347.
As a close-in sample on age as a factor in unemploya-
bility, always of course by our admittedly fallible definition,
thirty-two names drawn at random from the "hopeless"
list showed sixteen cases sixty years of age or older; only
two less than forty. By comparison fourteen names drawn
from the "hopeful" list showed none beyond sixty; four
each in the fifties, forties and thirties; two in the twenties.
On physical incapacity as a factor a few close-ins, again
taken at random, show typical situations:
A man of forty, a wife and three minor children, who earned
$18 a week until in 1931 he developed a degenerative disease
of the spinal cord. Medical reports indicate progressive de-
terioration though he may live indefinitely. He is now in a
wheel chair.
A nurse of forty-six with carcinoma of the colon, constantly
in and out of the hospital, who has had twenty-seven opera-
tions to maintain bowel elimination.
A man of thirty-five, wife and three children, with a severe
progressive cardiac disease and ulcers with constant hemorrh-
age, either condition precluding the slightest exertion.
A man of forty-seven, wife and two children, an unskilled
laborer who worked with fair regularity until early this year
when he developed a hypertensive heart disease. The doctor
states that he is incapacitated for any type of work for the
rest of his life.
A single woman of sixty-one, a housemaid all her life, who
in 1932 developed diabetes and a throat condition requiring a
tracheotomy. She since has been able to take nourishment
only through a tube inserted in the throat. The clinic reports
that she never again can work.
No formal attempt has been made as yet to analyze and
interpret the findings of this study for purposes of plan-
ning. However, some of the facts point toward certain
lines of action for ourselves and for other interested agen-
cies. A full use in Illinois of the provisions of the federal
social security act would doubtless provide for many. An
analysis of the 14,724 homemakers who are caring for
children very possibly might show that many more quali-
fy for aid under the liberal provisions of the aid to de-
pendent children section of the federal program than under
our present mothers' pension legislation.
Should new categories be added to the social security pro-
visions we should welcome the addition of "invalidity assist-
ance." Such provision for the disabled and chronically ill
would assure them regular aid from state and federal funds,
thus lessening the residue of the relief load subjected to
the vicissitudes of a locally-financed program.
One immediate result of this review of cases has been a
renewed consciousness on the part of the case workers of
unmet medical needs. So many referrals have been made
because of health needs that available clinic and hospital
374
THE SURVEY
facilities have been overtaxed, and appointments are now
being made for three months in advance. Another result is
a greater consciousness on our part of such resources in the
community as the Junior Counselling Service and the Ser-
vice to the Handicapped of the Illinois State Employment
Service, Works Progress Administration classes and the
National Youth Administration school aid program. We
realize that while making a fuller use of these facilities we
should also use the facts of this and similar studies to urge
additional vocational training facilities for persons for
whom specialized training may mean ultimate independence.
Still another result has been that, from the sifting and
sorting of the records of human beings in distress, we have
been able to see the proportions of the group with the least
ability to help themselves, and to assume greater respon-
sibility for them. When funds were low, as they frequently
have been, we knew the number of most helpless families
under our care, and with that in mind could and did plan
the distribution of such funds as we had. For example, we
gave full rent to those families with no able-bodied poten-
tial wage earner, and only partial rent to the others.
With our best efforts at rehabilitation, we can rescue,
here and there, perhaps a few hundred of these unemploy-
ables, the number depending upon our resourcefulness and
ingenuity. But what of the many more hundreds for whom
a life of self-support and financial independence cannot be
anticipated? Can we compromise and accept for them a
program of less than adequate relief and adequate service?
We do not think so. We believe we should have a relief pro-
gram that will permit this residual group to live with rea-
sonable security and comfort as folk participating in and
contributing to the life of the community, each according
to his ability. We believe further that the homes main-
tained by this program should be of a sort that will permit
the children of these families, and there are many hundreds
of them, to grow up in a decent, self-respecting setting. We
believe that, in terms of citizens of the next generation,
the investment will be justified.
The Business of Leadership
By SAN FORD BATES
Executive Director, Boys' Clubs of America
IS leadership a business that can be taught or learned
and if so, how? Is "boys' wyork," hopefully defined as
the task of leading youth toward the realization of
higher ideals of citizenship, a business, a profession, a career,
an avocation, a spare time activity or a mere outlet for one's
altruistic proclivities? Where are these leaders to come
from ? For years we have heard tales of how the great
corporations send their representatives in May and June
of each year to look over promising young livestock about
to be turned out into the world by our great universities.
Who is there in this land of progress that is charged with
the responsibility of doing the same thing with an eye to
discovering leaders in the work with underprivileged boys?
Do men go into the work of being boys' club leaders be-
cause they feel themselves qualified for this work, because
it is an easy job, because it leads to a career, because they
like boys, or because there is money in it? Has anybody
cared enough about the problem to explain to the men in
our colleges, or even to our college deans, what kind of
worker is needed in our boys' clubs?
The business of being a social case worker is becoming
more and more an exact science. There are some definitely
accepted techniques which a young social case worker can
master. It is not contended that the possession of these
techniques will make an acceptable social worker unless
there is a fundamentally fine character upon which to
build. But I think we can admit that there is a difference
between a skilled social worker and one who is not.
Likewise, we have long realized (if we have not, our
practical business friends will remind us) that there is a
group of very valuable people in this world who are not
case workers and who probably would not be made much
more valuable or helpful if they had a knowledge of case
work, and yet they know a lot about their fellow-men and
how to bring out what is good in them. I am not just sure
what we used to call these people. For the last few years
some of them have been known as group workers. Possibly
they themselves would not recognize such a classification.
Modestly we admit that we have not arrived at the point
where we know exactly what group work is, but we have
formed a National Association for the Purpose of Studying
It. Perhaps it is difficult to define a group worker because
of the presence of intangible elements in the make-up of a
successful one. We like to say that a person to be a useful
playground director, YMCA secretary, or boys' club execu-
tive must have character and integrity and personality.
These are all dreadfully general things. In fact, they are
so general that it is easy for almost any local boy to possess
them, at least in the opinion of his political friends who
are anxious to see him land a job. When we try to itemize
more specifically the traits that are essential in a good
boys' worker — honesty, frankness, patience, cheerfulness,
energy, athletic prowess, insight, good health and moral
integrity — we become a little clearer as to the type of per-
son we should select, but we are not much farther along
in determining how we should train him.
It is true that a man needs a broad outlook on life and
that a general education helps broaden that outlook. It is
true that a philosophical disposition helps us over many a
difficult bump in the road of life and that such a viewpoint
can be acquired by reading the right kind of literature. It
is true that a knowledge of the rules of hygiene assist us
in maintaining a healthy body. But by and large the at-
tributes that distinguish a high class group worker are those
he was born with rather than those he has acquired. Never^
theless we can all agree that the best man ever born will
be a better man after he is educated.
Equal in importance to the matter of education is the
task of recruiting the right type of man for training. This
is why Boys' Clubs of America invited a group of educators
to meet recently to discuss these questions. The response to
the invitation was gratifying in the extreme. Who would
not have welcomed the opportunity to sit around a table
with people like E. C. Goldsworthy of the University of
California, Stevenson Smith of the University of Wash-
ington, Robert W. Kelso of the University of Michigan,
DECEMBER 1937
375
Harrison Dobbs of the University of Chicago, William 1.
Newsletter of Western Reserve, Stuart Jaffary of Tulane,
Harold Meyer of the University of North Carolina, H.
H. Axworthy of New York University, Father Pouthier
of Fordham, Walter W. Pettit of the New York School
of Social Work, Ray Hoyer of Notre Dame, Charles E.
Hendry of George Williams College, William F. Byron of
Northwestern, L. K. Hall of Springfield College and Mar-
garet C. Norman of Catholic University. The character
of the discussion, the tolerance, intelligence and good tem-
per displayed by these folk and by the group of boys club
men who sat with them was just what you would expect
in such a distinguished group. These people had already
been wrestling with the problem of fitting college men
into jobs. They were keen to discuss, first, the innate quali-
fications for which they should look in a young man before
recommending him to this specific type of group work ;
second, what the curriculum content should be and third,
what effort should be undertaken to secure for these can-
didates positions of promise and usefulness in this field.
IT was generally agreed that qualifications for a boys'
club worker should include fundamental integrity of
character, high moral purpose, capacity for growth, devo-
tion to the work and belief in the high calling of the pro-
fession. He must be of a social disposition and have the
peculiar faculty of being liked by others. He must not
arouse antagonism or be the subject of fits of depression or
neurasthenia. Enthusiasm, youthful spirit, human under-
standing and wise sympathy are attributes always in de-
mand. Business ability, energy, capacity for hard work and
ability to interpret his work to the public, together with
the possession of physical health, were described as essen-
tial. A general educational preparation of college gradua-
tion or a carefully defined equivalent should be required.
The extent to which training for group work differs from
training for case work was discussed as well as the relation
between general educational preparation and preparation
for the special field of group work. The point in the edu-
cational preparation at which field work should begin was
touched upon. Early inquiry into the adaptability of college
men for actual character building or leadership work was
found to be advisable. Professor Dobbs of Chicago and Mr.
Hendry of George Williams laid out a definite plan for
curriculum on three separate levels. First, the level of gen-
eral educational preparation, represented by the under-
graduate period emphasizing in the junior and senior years
at least, studies of sociological, biological and psychological
nature. The second level of more specific preparation to be
undertaken in a one or two-year course in a graduate school
of social administration or a specialized school of social
work, with a shorter and more intensive course on the third
level, pointing a candidate for a position in the boys' work
field. In this third level field work with the agencies was
admitted to be a requisite and membership on the faculty
for officials from the national agencies concerned was rec-
ommended. Father Pouthier felt that the national group
work agencies should assist the schools of social work in
building up the correct curriculum in much the same way
that the courses in case work have been developed.
Mr. Hendry held that the specific collegiate or post-
graduate training for group workers might be described
under six headings. First, a general introductory course
which would consider the field and function of group work
in the light of the new sociology of leisure. Second, a num-
ber of courses including philosophy of principles and tech-
niques; principles and methods; individual guidance, real-
izing that work with individuals in a group work agency
is different from that in a case work agency; group guid-
ance, including group therapy, neighborhood and commun-
ity center work with boys; administrative principles and
methods of public relations and the interpretation of work
to the community.
The third general bracket would include specialized ac-
tivity courses, skill courses, and the fourth, work in other
fields that impinge upon group work. In the fifth would be
found field work, graded and carefully supervised, and in
the sixth the specialized course and an induction plan
developed by the agency hiring the candidate.
An interesting discussion revolved around the whole
matter of curriculum content. It was pointed out that even
with Mr. Hendry's carefully worked out curriculum, the
candidate need not make up his mind as to the exact type
of group work that he would engage in until the very end
of his course. It was interesting to note the belief that 90
percent or more of the training to be given to the boys'
work leader was of a general group work nature rather
than special training for boys' work.
The results of this conference may have a far-reaching
effect. Colleges may know better what kind of men to steer
towards a career of boy leadership and what is proper to
include in their curriculum for the training of such men.
Certainly it should give boys' club leaders increased de-
termination to broaden the viewpoint and deepen the in-
fluence of their personnel throughout the educative process.
We should not be beguiled by possibilities of in-service
training or by the inevitable three-day institute or short
course plan. United demand for a general educational
background with a thorough preliminary training is the
only safe method to follow if group work is to become a
career, not an avocation.
THERE are always three divisions in the problem of
personnel and group work — recruiting, training, and
placement. It would be idle to concentrate on the solution
of the first two and then be confronted by the unfortunate
situation of finding scores or hundreds of likely young
men who have spent several years in college preparation
unable to find positions in what they were led to believe
was a career service. There are those of us who believe
that the realization of the third objective will follow
naturally upon the achievement of the first two. As ex-
President Hoover pointed out at the conference, it was
necessary properly to train a school teacher before the de-
mand could be made that suitably trained teachers be em-
ployed. If we can induce our colleges to interest suitable
men in the attractiveness of boys' work as a career, if we
can give such men that practical yet inspirational type of
training to sharpen the inherent personality traits which
make a man liked by his fellows, it ought not to be difficult
to bring boards of directors and policy-making officials to
the acceptance of the principle.
The business of leadership in group work or leisure time
guidance is just as much a business as is steel, textiles, or
transportation and there is even more reason that in this,
the most fateful business of all, sound and far-sighted
principles for recruiting, training and placement should
prevail. It may take many more conferences and much
persistent effort to bring it about, but I am satisfied that a
good start has been made. Certainly the autumn meeting of
educators and boys' work leaders laid down a base line for
future planning and growth.
376
THE SURVEY
A New Day for a Juvenile Court
By WENDELL F. JOHNSON
Director, Social Service Federation, Toledo, Ohio
WHEN a schoolboy startled Toledo recently by
shooting his principal and then himself, the town
was remarkably free from the usual hysteria that
follows a tragedy of this sort. Significant was the comment
of a newspaper editor in his daily column: "It is comfort-
ing that if this boy recovers, and his case goes to court, we
have here in Lucas County a juvenile judge and a probation
machinery which is unusually intelligent and well equipped
for such an extraordinary proceeding."
It is less than a year since Lucas County, Ohio, installed
a new judge of the court of domestic relations and juvenile
court, but in that time an amazing transformation has
taken place in the handling of children's cases and divorce
hearings.
. The probation department has had a complete change of
personnel, the old political appointees being replaced by a
chief probation officer and staff chosen on the basis of train-
ing and experience. The Juvenile Detention Home has
been converted into a child study institute, headed by a
psychologist brought from a children's clinic and staffed
by case workers with a background of psychological train-
ing. Divorce applications, as well as juvenile court com-
plaints, are routinely cleared in the social service exchange,
followed by a summary of information on the family from
other social agencies, which is made available to the judge
before the hearing.
The physical set-up of the court has been altered. Where-
as, under the old regime, divorce hearings attracted large
crowds of curiosity seekers, eager to hear all of the lurid
details, the new judge holds these hearings in a small room
to which are admitted only the persons immediately con-
cerned. This has released space for private offices and inter-
viewing rooms for the probation staff in the interest of
greater privacy for parents and children.
Not only is the new judge using case work service as an
aid in making decisions regarding custody of children in
divorce cases. His trained probation staff also is utilizing
as never before the facilities of children's agencies to pro-
vide needed care for particular children, and he has pre-
vailed upon the county commissioners to pay board for both
dependent and delinquent children in boarding homes when
such placements seem advisable and parents cannot pay.
When the National Probation Association sent Francis
Hiller to make a survey of the Toledo juvenile court in
1931, he found little to praise and much to criticize.
Political appointments of probation officers who lacked both
general educational background and special training; fail-
ure to use the social service exchange; lack of coordination
with other social agencies; slipshod records; inadequate pro-
bation work and absence of protective work for neglected
children — these were the conditions described in Mr.
Hiller's report. Today these faults have been corrected.
The survey was made at the request of a group of social
agency executives and the Toledo Rotary Club. When it
became evident that the judge then on the bench intended
to ignore the recommendations made in the report, a large
citizens' committee was formed, representing forty-rive
civic organizations. After an effort to get action, this com-
mittee soon decided that no improvement could be expected
until the expiration of the judge's term of office at the end
of 1936.
A year before the scheduled election, the group began a
search for an available candidate to run against the in-
cumbent. They chose Paul W. Alexander, an assistant
prosecuting attorney, graduate of Harvard Law School,
active in the YMCA, member of the board of a com-
munity house. He had held a number of appointive offices,
but did not relish the idea of campaigning for an elective
office. He finally agreed to run, provided he were indorsed
by the Bar Association. That indorsement was given.
IT was a hard campaign, for the incumbent judge, al-
though seventy-eight years old, had forty years of suc-
cessful political campaigning behind him, and throughout
his years on the police bench and later in the juvenile court,
had built up strong political support. Various strong ele-
ments in the community rallied around the new candidate.
Protestant ministers and Catholic clergy came out openly
for him. The secretary of the League of Women Voters
resigned in order to assist in his campaign. Social agency
boards for the first time encouraged their staff members
to work for his election. He won by a substantial majority.
Once elected, Mr. Alexander began to prepare himself
for his new position. He visited the best juvenile courts in
other parts of the country. He consulted the National Pro-
bation Association. He devoured all the reading matter he
could find on the subject. He counselled with social agen-
cies in touch with the problem. Although court positions
were not required -by law to be filled by civil service pro-
cedure, he asked the State Civil Service Commission to con-
duct examinations for probation officers and required the
existing staff to take them if they wished to be considered
for reappointment. He asked the commission to waive its
usual requirements as to residence within the state, and
through the National Probation Association he sought
trained workers throughout the country who would submit
their applications. Charles L. Chute, of the Probation
Association, participated in the oral examinations, and his
office assisted in grading the examination papers.
For chief probation officer Judge Alexander selected L.
Wallace Hoffman of Detroit, at that time president of the
Michigan Probation Association and a lecturer at the Uni-
versity of Michigan. Mr. Hoffman was recommended by
a special examining board from among a dozen applicants
brought from other cities. His performance has fully justi-
fied his selection. As girls' referee the new judge appointed
Rita O'Grady, graduate of the National Catholic School
of Social Service, teacher of case work at the University of
Toledo, and a case supervisor in the County Relief Ad-
ministration.
The new court is hampered by cramped quarters and
inadequate physical equipment, but the judge wisely de-
cided that the greatest need was a strong professional staff.
He hopes to get a better physical layout at a later date. In
the meantime, the court has made a real start in intelligent
treatment of dependent and delinquent children.
DECEMBER 1937
377
SOCIAL AGENCY BOARDS AND HOW TO SERVE ON THEM
II -In a Changing Scene
By CLARENCE KING
New York School of Social Work
CERTAIN social work administrators seem to regard
the lay board as a sort of vermiform appendix which
had a function when social work was young and
under private auspices but which now, given the present
trends in social work, its professionalization and its in-
creasing support by public funds, is merely a nuisance if
not actually useless. The soundness of this view may be
tested by reviewing some of the chief uses of a board [see
Why and Wherefore, The Survey, November 1937, page
342] and estimating their present and future usefulness.
Boards form the nucleus for "starting new movements."
Social work is not today a "new movement,'1 certainly not
to social workers. But some parts are newer than others
and there is abundant evidence that no single part of it is
wholly an old story fully understood and subscribed to by
all the people. So far as entrenchment in public under-
standing is concerned every area of social work still has its
pioneer phases. Take for example the matter of relief, old-
est of all aspects of social work. The necessity for relief is
admitted, but its administration as a skilled function has
not yet been accepted, generally and permanently. Only a
few years ago the commissioner of public welfare, more
commonly and still frequently known as the poor master,
was no more important in many communities than the dog
catcher or the sealer of weights and measures. It took not a
crystallized social conviction but the sudden multiplication
of relief expenditures in the depression to take the poor
master out of his musty cubby-hole and raise his stature in
the public mind. We Americans are prone to measure the
importance of anything by what we pay for it. Public wel-
fare became important to us when it zoomed into the top
brackets of local government expenditures second only to
education. But did this mean that the social philosophy of
public welfare and the wisdom of its administration by
skilled and competent personnel, had been taken perma-
nently to the public's heart? I do not think so. Public sen-
timent does not change so quickly and it is notoriously
fickle. I believe that in the area of skilled administration
and modern methods, relief and every other part of social
work is a "new movement" in American life, calling for
just as much imagination, energy and conviction in its
promotion as any movement in the history of social work.
It is already in the record that the run-of-the-mill tax-
payer and the "practical politician" have no great enthusi-
asm for even the little that has been built up in this area.
Can any one question that the bulwark of an able board is
necessary to hold the gains of the emergency and to root
them for permanency and growth ?
Boards give "sponsorship and prestige" to the work. If a
community chest has admitted a social agency to its support,
or if a city council has established a social service by ordi-
nance, what more does it need, ask some of our friends.
Anyone who has ever seen a Salvation Army captain be-
fore the budget committee of a community chest knows the
answer to that one. The Salvation Army is one of the few
private social agencies that get along without a board. Be-
ing a from-the-top-down organization it demonstrates ex-
tremely well the advantages and weaknesses of centraliza-
tion of power and responsibility in a single executive
instead of in a group. Without intervention of any com-
mittee structure, authority descends from the international
commander in London, through national, district, and state
headquarters to the captain of the local corps. The Salva-
tion Army has been admitted to most chests, but the local
captain appears before the budget committee unsupported
by any local prestige group. The state or even the district
commander may come with him but it is not the same.
Budget committees are human and much affected by the
presence of influential laymen, even if they do not say a
word. Every other agency has a board to plead for it. The
Salvation Army has none. It is sure of some appropriation,
but it finds hard going when it asks for funds to expand
services or to start any new work.
As an example of the usefulness of sponsorship to a
public agency I recall the experience of a small city where
in 1932 the expenditure of the welfare department came to
$90,000. The needs of the community were such that that
amount would have to be quadrupled in 1933 if they were
to be met with any decency. The welfare commissioner
knew this but he was under heavy political fire at the time
and dared not ask for an increased budget. At that juncture
his department was put under investigation by a commission
of seven influential citizens, representing the dominant lead-
ership of all parties. Three of them were the commission-
er's political enemies, bent on removing him, and three
his partisans, bent on whitewashing him. The seventh man
was sufficiently strong and impartial to lift the investigation
above the partisan level, to make it an examination of ser-
vices and needs and not of personalities. The upshot was
that the commission declared that at least $360,000 was
necessary if the department was to meet its responsibilities.
THE commission did not stop at this point. It believed
that it had a duty to interpret as well as to sponsor.
Unofficially and informally it invited the members of the
city appropriating body to meet with it and hear its reasons
for the staggering increase that would be asked for officially
the following week. The meeting was held on a Sunday
afternoon in the neutral atmosphere of the YMCA, with
time enough for thorough discussion. As soon as the budget
request was in, the members of the commission made it their
business to carry interpretation to the community. They
went before the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce,
the American Legion and many other representative organi-
zations and presented the facts and figures so effectively that
the quadrupled budget gained united community support
and was approved by the appropriating body with hardly a
dissenting vote. Secure in their collective influence, these
men accomplished what the hard-pressed executive, sus-
pected of bias, had not even dared to ask.
Boards "interpret the community to the staff." But does
the staff of an official department, entrenched by law, still
need such interpretation from a representative board? In
January 1934, federal grants for emergency relief were
administered in a western state through a commission of
five appointed by the governor. One member came from a
378
THE SURVEY
lumber district west of the Rockies; one from the southern
mining section of the state; two were railroad men, one
from the southeast, the other from the northeast. The chair-
man was a wholesale grocer and milling man. Twice a
month these five men, each a leader in his part of the
state, journeyed to the state capital to confer with their
executive officer. Each brought with him a fund of infor-
mation about conditions in his corner of the state and of
the effectiveness of the local offices. One told of the unwill-
ingness of local officials in the depressed sugar beet areas to
feed Mexicans imported during prosperity but now rated
as "undesirable aliens"; another, of the efforts of politi-
cal agitators to "arouse" the drought-stricken farmers.
TO be sure many quick decisions had to be made by the
executive between board meetings, but those decisions
were made against the background of interpretation of local
conditions and popular temper brought to him by the board.
It will be asked why an adequate field staff could not have
reported these same conditions. Probably it could have,
provided always that it were adequate, equipped with sound
business judgment and mature community insight, and en-
joying the full confidence of the community, a combination
which, it must be admitted, a professional staff is not as
likely to possess as are citizens experienced in public reac-
tion and with roots deep in community life. In any case
the executive who has two channels of information, one
through his staff and one through his board, is in the ad-
vantageous position of being able to check one against the
other. An executive's problem rarely is one of too much in-
formation.
Boards "choose, supervise or remove the executive."
Clearly they must, in the case of a local, private agency.
But if the city takes over the work, cannot these functions
be performed by a mayor or city manager; or better yet,
cannot the executive be chosen by some civil service or merit
system and be removable only on charges ? The public assist-
ance officer of an English city (corresponding to the com-
missioner of public welfare here) is thus chosen as a career
man. He can be removed only on charges presented to the
Minister of Health in Whitehall. The chairman of a public
assistance committee, discussing this with me, said: "You
see we can't remove Bob, and it's a fine thing. He can tell
us just what he thinks we should hear. He doesn't have
to fear making himself unpopular with us."
Certainly our persisting spoils system is a cogent argu-
ment for boards as a part of our public welfare organiza-
tion. A board with long, overlapping terms, longer than
that of the mayor, has proved an effective device for pro-
tecting the executive and his staff from removal for "the
good of the party." Growing sentiment in favor of the merit
system may make the protection of a board unnecessary so
far as the staff is concerned. It probably will not protect
the executive, generally regarded as a policy-making offi-
cial. Most advocates of the merit system exempt such
officials on the ground that if a mayor or governor is to be
held responsible for his policies he must be able to appoint-
his own department heads and to remove them at will. This
results in what is called the cabinet form of government.
Older countries have achieved continuity of service under
this form of administration by putting as second-in-com-
mand in each department a career man who does not change
with the political head of the office.
Boards "make policy decisions." To permit them to do so
is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the cabinet
form of government. Those who favor that form would
concentrate all power in the hands of one elected official
and through him in his appointed cabinet. If the cabinet
should not make good, the official, it is argued, would not
be reelected. One trouble with this doctrine is that the pub-
lic, when there is no board interested and familiar with the
work, has no accurate, unbiased way of learning whether or
not the administration actually has made good in each par-
ticular department. Another is that changing the chief
executive and his entire cabinet every time there is a break-
down in one department, seriously interferes with the con-
tinuity of other departments which may have been run-
ning satisfactorily.
The collision between the two philosophies of govern-
ment, one of which would vest policy-making in a board,
the other in an executive, is well illustrated in the report of
the New York Governor's Commission on Unemployment
Relief. The majority said: "The trend of governmental
progress during the past few decades has pointed inevitably
toward the centralization of administrative authority in the
hands of single executives in order that these individuals
may be held directly responsible for the execution of the
duties which are placed upon them." The minority replied:
"The philosophy of one individual should not control the
social welfare policy of the State of New York. State social
welfare action, with its rapidly expanding horizon, touches
so intimately and with such potential control, the lives,
thoughts and philosophies of those served, that (we are)
opposed to resting responsibility for that action in any single
individual."
A number of states which have recently reorganized
their public welfare departments have established policy-
making state boards and county or district boards. In Mary-
land the department is headed by a board which appoints
the state executive from a civil service list. The American
Public Welfare Association in the assistance which it has
given to various states in reorganizing their welfare services,
seems to have favored consistently the continuation of ad-
ministrative boards for both state and local departments.
On the other hand certain states which have reorganized
with the advice of such bodies as the Institute of Public
Administration and The Brookings Institution, have adopt-
ed the cabinet form of state government and eliminated all
boards. A wise compromise between these two positions
might lie in centralization of responsibility in a single execu-
tive assisted by a board with advisory powers only.
Given the long history of lay boards in sponsoring and
developing social welfare services, and the fact that those
services are still, in many areas, in the frontiers of public
opinion, there seems little ground for the notion that boards
are no longer useful. The day may come when all social
work will be so entrenched in public favor that its prog-
ress will no longer require the informed conviction of any
single body of citizens as a driving and interpreting force.
But should that millennium ever dawn, with it will come
new horizons of service calling for new efforts.
THE SURVEY is indebted to Harper and Brothers as
well as to the author for the privilege of offering to its
readers a series of four articles of which this is the
second, drawn from Mr. King's book, Social Agency
Boards and How to Serve on Them, to be published
early in the new year. Articles to follow are: The
Necessary Executive, and Community Roots.
DECEMBER 1937
379
25 SURVEY YEARS -AND 25 TO GO
• The service which you have rendered to
the social work field is beyond calculation.
— KENDALL EMERSON, M.D., 'National Tu-
berculosis Association.
• Never did I believe more profoundly in
the work which you and your associates
are accomplishing with such discernment
and high efficiency than I do now. — JOHN
R. MOTT, International Missionary Council.
• The Boys' Club of America extends greet-
ings and congratulations to a "band of
prophets of a better social order" on this
twenty-fifth anniversary of Survey Asso-
ciates, Inc. — SANFORD BATES, Boys' Clubs of
America.
• I am confident that, through the years
to come, your magazines will continue to
exert the same stimulating, thought-provok-
ing influence over the minds of the Ameri-
can people that they have in the past. —
JAMES E. WEST, Boy Scouts of America.
• Congratulations upon the twenty-five
years during which The Survey has so ef-
fectively interpreted the aspirations of social
workers and our concern with the social
setting in which we operate. — LINTON B.
SWIFT, Family Welfare Association of
America.
• My hearty appreciation of the services
that The Survey and Survey Graphic have
rendered during these many years. You
know I date back to the time when you
were Charities and The Commons, and the
world do move! — C. C. CARSTENS, Child
Welfare League of America, Inc.
• When I first came to the National Con-
sumers' League nearly ten years ago, Mrs.
Kelley said to me, "Always cooperate with
The Survey. It is an important magazine
which will become increasingly important."
Of course, she was right. — EMILY SIMS
MARCONNIER, National Consumers' League.
• The settlements over the country have
received stimulus and inspiration from The
Survey and have gained immeasurably from
the sympathetic interpretation which you
have given the movement . . . The con-
sistent policy of presenting all sides of con-
troversial opinion has borne testimony to
the open-mindedness and fairness of its edi-
tor and its supporting group. — LILLIE M.
PECK, National Federation of Settlements.
• Our best hope for permanent progress in
the quarter century ahead (as in that which
has just passed) is the service, the coopera-
tion, and the stimulation which we can
count upon from the able men and women
always vigorously ready to put first things
first in this generation. Survey Associates
is a composite of able minds. It has been a
privilege to work with you and we can
look forward together with courage. —
THOMAS PARRAN, M.D., Surgeon General,
U.S. Public Health Service.
• For its second twenty-five years may The
Survev fulfill and justify the promise of its
first. — Louis BROWNLOW, Public Adminis-
tration Clearing House, Chicago.
• Over a period of a quarter of a century
The Survey has been not only a pioneer in
social thought and theory but one of the
most effective tools in social work practice.
— FRANK BANE, Social Security Board.
• You have proved the soundness of the
cooperative principle in publishing by estab-
lishing the tradition of courageous journal-
ism and progressive leadership in social
thinking. — ALLEN T. BURNS, Community
Chests and Councils, Inc.
• At the quarter century mark, you have
the freshness and virility of youth, together
with the experience and knowledge of the
mature adult. We appreciate your splendid
contribution to the field of social welfare
during these years. — FRED K. HOEHLER,
American Public Welfare Association.
• To those of us actually engaged in the
social work field, The Survey and Survey
Graphic have provided a channel for the
exchange of information, and have kept
us abreast of developments. To lay-persons
they have been most useful in interpreting
the difficult problems with which we are
all concerned. — HARRY L. HOPKINS, Worlds
Progress Administration.
Close to the heart of the Silver Anni-
versary of Survey Associates have
been the messages from friends every-
where bringing us the best of birthday
wishes for the future. These, for ex-
ample, from national and New York
agencies which collaborate with us
year in and year out.
The fall of 1912 saw this member-
ship corporation of ours launched.
Our span of twenty-five years was
celebrated on December 2 at a dinner
in New York, with a nation-wide
group of sponsors; with Mrs. August
Beltnont presiding, and with the
speakers: Governor Frank Murphy of
Michigan, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia
of New York, Prof. Felix Frankfurter
of Harvard University and Walter S.
Gifford, president of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company.
Kindred to the dinner theme: The
Shape of Things to Come, is that of
the special issue of Surrey Graphic
(December) and of a special issue of
The Midmonthly Surrey, covering the
fields of social work, to be published
when the "Mid" turns fifteen in 1938.
• Outstanding has been your contribution
to the popular understanding of social prob-
lems.— HOWARD R. KNIGHT, National Con-
ference of Social Work,.
• Congratulations on this twenty-fifth year
— and what a twenty-five years it has been!
Through it all you have done a fine job and
are steadily doing it better. — DOUGLAS P.
FALCONER, Brooklyn Bureau of Charities.
• I have marveled at the way you have
hewn to the line and throughout the years
have continued to sound that note of social
intelligence which is not easy to define. —
DAVID H. HOLBROOK, National Social Work.
Council.
• During a quarter of a century marked
by extraordinary economic and social
changes your organization has been of vital
aid in keeping forward-looking people
abreast of changing conditions. — H. G.
MOULTON, The Brookjngs Institution.
• It is a cause for wonder and admiration
that The Survey, while helping to fashion
effective tools for services for those who
lack most, has never failed to keep its ideals
so high and its vision so clear. — COURTENAY
DINWIDDIE, National Child Labor Com-
mittee.
• Twenty-five years ago your organization,
like ours, was born to undertake a great
new venture. Through the years Survey
Associates and the NOPHN have worked
in the closest harmony to interpret the place
of the public health nurse in the social pic-
ture.— DOROTHY DEMING, National Organi-
zation for Public Health Nursing.
• I doubt if any other quarter of a century
since the American Revolution, certainly
none since the Civil War, has had the im-
portance in social and political reform of
the twenty-five years ushered in by the
Pittsburgh Survey. The Survey magazine
has been hub and axle of the progress of
these years. — AUBREY WILLIAMS, National
Youth Administration.
• We bear first hand and heartfelt testimony
to the influence on both ourselves and our
professional associates of Survey Graphic
and Midmonthly Survey. By some editorial
magic your issues strengthen our spirit and
raise it above the daily annoyances of the
job. May the brightest days of your first
twenty-five years be darker than the darkest
of the next twenty-five. — ROBERT P. LANE,
Welfare Council of New York, City.
• Speaking for ourselves and for the work-
ers in the courts all over the country, we
have appreciated and benefited by the con-
structive and progressive discussion of all
related problems included in The Survey
from time to time. We do not forget the
services of those who, in the past, have con-
tributed to your upbuilding, among them
our friend, Arthur Kellogg. — CHARLES L.
CHUTE, National Probation Association.
380
THE SURVEY
• Salutations to Survey Associates for their
distinguished service in marking new fron-
tiers for civilized living. — SIDONIE M. GRU-
ENBERG, Child Study Association oj America.
• I am confident that our membership
values the free-handed, intelligent, well-
balanced and progressive policies of the
managers of The Survey. — E. R. CASS, The
Prison Association of New Yorl^.
• Your journals have proved a tower of
strength to all engaged in the task of im-
proving living conditions, of preserving and
extending civil liberty, of advancing the
cause of social security, social justice and
world peace. — HARRY W. LAIDLER, League
for Industrial Democracy.
• In keeping thoroughly alive to all the
conflicting issues and demands of the
changing times the social worker needs
The Survey. Disagree with it, dislike parts
of it, want to change it — but take it, read
it, grow with it and through it. — HOWARD
KRAUCHER, National Recreation Association.
• I hesitate to think of what would have
been the present status of social work with-
out a magazine like The Survey to guide,
enlighten and push back the horizon not
only of social workers but of thoughtful
Americans generally. — WALTER WHITE, Na-
tional Association for the Advancement of
Colored People.
• During the last quarter century Survey
Associates have played an indispensable role
in revealing and recording conditions, in
analyzing problems, and in spreading in-
formation, helpful and stimulating to all
who wished to implement their purpose to
serve the common good. — SHELBY M. HAR-
RISON, Russell Sage Foundation.
• During these last twenty-five years The
Survey and Survey Graphic have filled a
special need for all of us in picturing so
graphically the whole American scene in
which social work is practiced. We need
these two interpreters more than ever dur-
ing our changing times. — BERTHA McCALL,
National Association for Travelers Aid and
Transient Service.
• I am grateful for the social vision which
The Survey has brought to ministers and
religious workers throughout the country.
I myself feel deeply indebted to The Survey
and I am only one of many ministers who
have gained deeper understanding of social
problems and social needs because of what
it has done. — SAMUEL McCREA CAVERT, Fed-
eral Council of the Churches of Christ in
America.
• Those twin chroniclers of social change
in the United States — Survey Graphic and
The Midmonthly Survey — should be sung
in verse for their youth and vitality despite
the quarter century during which they
have scorpioned and reformed and yet re-
mained cheerful and tolerant. They have
been bitter at times, but never sour; stern
but never forbidding; critical but never
whining; always intelligent and full of un-
derstanding.— LEIFER MAGNUSSON, Interna-
tional Labor Organization.
Our thanks to every good wisher at
this quarter century mark; to all those
throughout the country who share the
spirit of this celebration and bear a
hand in making it a turning point in
our fortunes and our service to the
times. And when it comes to good
wishes for the years ahead — the same
to you. <£? .,
^^r-
• You have made important contributions
to the world of social work, and by your
support of our work, to the dignity of
family life. More power to you! — MAR-
GUERITE BENSON, American Birth Control
League, Inc.
• It has been heartening to find Survey
Associates, pioneer explorers of so many
undeveloped areas of social responsibility,
applying their unfailing implement of fac-
tual information to conquest of a remaining
frontier — the slums. — HELEN ALFRED, Na-
tional Public Housing Conference.
• Until our association acquired strength to
establish a journal of its own in 1911, The
Survey, under its earlier name, regularly
gave it a column for expression of its
"growing pains." Education for action has
cemented our cordial relationship through
the years. — JOHN B. ANDREWS, American
Association for Labor Legislation.
• The Survey constantly reminds me that
no one can carry on social work without
having to face the fact that social welfare
is one and indivisible: that no one activity
can be carried on without affecting and
being affected by the whole wide range of
social life. — HOMER FOLKS, New Yor% State
Charities Aid Association.
• As one who during almost the whole
period of 'The Survey's existence has relied
greatly upon it for information and stimula-
tion of thought regarding the vital social
issues of our day, I am glad to express my
gratitude for the significant service it has
rendered over the years. — ANNA V. RICE,
National Board, Young Women's Christian
Association.
• In a period which has been characterized
by as much change in social and economic
relationships as in industrial and mechanistic
methods, Survey Associates have not only
rendered an invaluable service which all
thinking people must applaud but have de-
veloped a distinct field in which their oper-
ations have a unique and gratifying useful-
ness.— HOWARD P. JONES, National Munici-
pal League.
• The Survey and Survey Graphic con-
sistently offer to an active group of socially
minded citizens a broad understanding of
the nature of the social problems inherent
in our society and of the aims and purposes
underlying the day to day activities of social
agencies. The Survey is more than a journal
— it is a stimulator of social progress. —
H. L. LURIE, Council of Jewish Federations
and Welfare Funds.
• The Survey today is a part of social work,
the expression of current thought and a
stimulus to progress. — EUGENE KINCKLE
JONES, National Urban League.
• The Survey has been indispensable to
social workers and has been chiefly re-
sponsible for the elevation of the profession
to its present high standing. — A. EPSTEIN,
American Association for Social Security.
• Salutations to Survey Associates on the
completion of a quarter century of service,
and congratulations to you on the splendid
prospect for your leadership during these
momentous days ahead. — REGINALD M. AT-
WATER, M.D., American Public Health As-
sociation.
• The present-day crop of professional and
lay leaders in governmental and private
fields of social work have had motivation
in large part through the progressive and
thorough analyses of social trends made
possible by Survey Associates. — JAMES L.
FIESER, American Red Cross.
• It is difficult to put into words the keen
sense of obligation that I feel towards you
and those who have been associated with
you in The Survey through the years, and
for the breadth of vision, statesmanship and
courage which The Survey has consistently
shown. — KATHARINE F. LENROOT, U.S. Chil-
dren's Bureau.
• The Survey's quality of sound informa-
tion on matters of social import, together
with a certain gaiety of presentation, has
helped to take the whole field of social
change away from the statistician and the
sob-sister and to commandeer the loyalty of
the great body of thinking and acting
Americans. It is a rare job in journalism. —
CLARENCE E. PICKETT, American Friends
Service Committee.
• The Survey has fulfilled its promise. By
its thorough gathering of facts revealing the
social needs of the times, and by its fair
analysis and striking presentation of such
facts, it has stimulated many of the im-
portant social advances made during the
quarter century of its existence. — STANLEY
P. DAVIES, Charity Organization Society of
the City of New Yort(_.
• What other journal brings together so
many of the elements that are activating
forces in education, medicine (particularly
psychiatry), business life, industry, labor
conditions, and art as it portrays any of
these — all to the end that many features of
our social living and our efforts at social
work may better be understood and ap-
preciated.— WILLIAM HEALY, M.D., Judge
Ba^er Guidance Center.
• For twenty-five years The Survey has
been the indispensable help of every social
worker. It has given him the fullest in-
formation on all developments in social
work and in the related fields of industry
and government. It always has been in ad-
vance of actual accomplishments in these
fields and has provided their leaders with
guidance and inspiration. — SOLOMON Low-
ENSTEIN, president, National Conference of
Social Worl(.
DECEMBER 1937
381
The Common Welfare
Tally Ho!
THE chase of relief chiselers has taken a new turn in
Ohio where a commercial firm, known chiefly as a
credit and bill collecting agency, announces that it is "defi-
nitely satisfied" that from 20 to 25 percent of the people
on relief are chiselers and offers to run them down for $3 a
head. Activities thus far seem to have been confined to
Toledo and Cleveland, but the firm is looking for business
elsewhere, assuring its prospects that it is "effective in de-
tecting clients who are attempting to conceal wealth."
In Toledo the firm, after "checking" a block of relief
cases, announced that 28 percent of them were "definite
chiselers" and only 24 percent "unquestionably entitled to
relief." The Council of Social Agencies, through a special
laymen's committee, promptly swung into action and began
its own check of the cases dubbed "chiseler." Of 120 exam-
ined at the time of the report five, in the committee's judg-
ment, were "definite chiselers."
In Cleveland, the business firm's report to the City Fi-
nance Commission on the first 2600 of the six thousand
cases it was authorized to examine showed 47.7 percent
"actually in need"; 23.4 percent "borderline"; 17.4 percent
"chiselers" and 4.4 percent "possessed of resources." Here
many social workers, while deploring the effect on the
clients of the whole ballyhoo, admitted that the "more or
less detective" type of investigation had turned up new in-
formation in a number of cases.
In Chicago the much investigated relief clients seem to
be in for "a complete and realistic reexamination" at the
instance of a committee of the Illinois Council on Public
Assistance and Employment, a body of business men ap-
pointed in October by Governor Homer. Just how or by
whom the reexamination will be made has not, at this writ-
ing, been announced, but Joseph Moss, director of the Cook
County Bureau of Public Welfare, has reminded the com-
mittee that "the confidential nature of social service records
is recognized in law," and that, "the investigators must be
capable of approaching their task of evaluating the situation
in a scientific research spirit . . . with some standards by
which judgment as to need can be measured. ..."
The Automobile Workers
BENEATH the surface of the recent wildcat strike in
the Fisher Body plant at Pontiac were forces and
counter-forces that may determine the future of the collec-
tive bargaining agreements that the United Automobile
Workers of America now have with all the motor manu-
facturers except Ford. The left wing faction of the union
believes in militant tactics, not only to secure contracts
with employers but also to enforce employer compliance
with them. This paradoxical strategy was repudiated by
Homer Martin, UAWA president, in refusing to authorize
the sitdown at Pontiac. Governor Murphy of Michigan
informed the UAWA that the law enforcement agencies of
the state would not tolerate a continuance of wildcat sit-
downs. President Martin now informs General Motors
that the union will assume responsibility for unauthorized
actions of its members if the company will assume respon-
sibility for disciplining company subordinates who violate
the agreement. The negotiations begun last summer enter
a new state, in a recession rather than a boom, when the
pressure for production is not so urgent on the manufac-
turer, with the union leadership divided and the rank and
file increasingly skeptical of the delay.
The drive to organize the Ford Motor Company, begun
at scattered assembly plants, was the occasion of a strike at
Kansas City in October and St. Louis in November. The
Kansas City plant had not yet reopened as this was written.
At St. Louis the Ford plant continued to operate on a re-
duced schedule, turning out new models for the local auto-
mobile show. In Detroit the UAWA was cheered by one
development. Several officers of a so-called Independent
Association of Chrysler Employes, claiming the organiza-
tion was a thinly disguised company union, resigned and
came into the UAWA fold.
Straws in the Wind
HE volume of private placements reported in Octo-
ber represents a gain of 21.2 percent above the num-
ber reported in October 1936, and 79.6 over the volume for
October 1935," said Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins in
giving out the latest employment service figures on Novem-
ber 20. "Private placements, however, were 12.3 percent
fewer than the number for September." In each of the
three preceding years October had shown a gain over Sep-
tember.
An Associated Press dispatch from Cleveland on Novem-
ber 24 stated that while the lowest point in steel production
in three years had resulted "in the lay-off of only 10 percent
of the nation's 600,000 steel workers, observers said the
prevailing work week averages between twenty and twenty-
five hours." Earlier this year, the work week was approxi-
mately forty hours. . . . Mayor Harold H. Burton of
Cleveland reports that the number of relief applications in
that city increased last month from 400 a week to 1000 a
week. . . . Clinton S. Golden, director of the Steel Workers'
Organizing Committee of the CIO estimated (November
20) that 200,000 men have been placed "on furlough" in
the industry, including those on part time.
The Massachusetts Department of Labor and Industry
reports that the index of persons employed, on the basis of
a 1925-7 average, dropped from 81.1 in September to 78.9
in October, while the index of wages fell from 78.7 to 72.4.
"These changes were largely the result of curtailment of
production in the shoe and textile industries."
In Pennsylvania, "applications for relief during the week
[ending November 20] totaled 10,352, a rise of 2710 over
the previous week due largely to increases reported by urban
centers and coal producing are'as." "Of the 5754 cases
opened that week, 3949 were accepted for relief because of
loss of private employment or decreased wages."
In spite of a 3 percent increase over the country in com-
munity chest funds, the private agencies find themselves in
no position to assume relief obligations. A group of chest
executives is considering a constructive policy on national
382
THE SURVEY
and local relief which, when formulated, will be laid before
President Roosevelt and Congress.
Expecting a rise in unemployment, David C. Adie, New
York State Commissioner of Social Welfare, has notified
Governor Lehman that at least $54 million will be neces-
sary to provide shoes, food, clothing and shelter for the
state's unemployed in the fiscal year beginning next July 1.
This amount is $10 million more than the current appro-
priation. . . . Of those applying to the Charity Organization
Society for aid in October, 53 percent were in difficulties
because of unemployment, as compared with 49.4 percent
in October 1936. ... A worker in the placement office of
the New York Urban League states that "unemployment
in Harlem is suddenly on the up and up. There's nothing
seasonal about it — this is new unemployment."
Children of War
WHATEVER the political issues in the war-torn coun-
tries of the old world, there can be no two opinions
on the plight of the innocent victims of conflict, the chil-
dren. Helpless, lost, their whole world destroyed, their
sufferings break through all barriers of race and nationality
to the wellsprings of universal sympathy. Happily there
are ways in which that sympathy can be expressed, quickly
and concretely. For example, the American Friends Service
Committee, 1515 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, is prepared
to send clothing to Spain — any kind just so it is strong,
warm and in good condition. The North American Com-
mittee to Aid Spanish Democracy, 381 Fourth Avenue,
New York, with which the Social Workers Committee to
Aid Spanish Democracy now is affiliated, is conducting a
special Spanish Children's Christmas Campaign for the five
colonies which it is supporting and for other destitute chil-
dren, estimated at 600,000, in the care of the Loyalist gov-
ernment.
The tragedy of children in the fighting areas in China has
been written and pictured in poignant detail but only re-
cently have general efforts in their behalf been under way
in this country. The appeal of China Child Welfare, Inc.,
570 Lexington Avenue, New York, is endorsed by respon-
sible Chinese officials. The long established China Famine
Relief, U.S.A., 105 East 22 Street, New York, is asking for
a million dollars for aid to noncombatant refugees. It will
be recalled that the American Red Cross has authorized its
chapters to accept money for transmission to the Chinese
Red Cross and other authorized agencies. Also that the
Federal Council of Churches has announced a united
Christmas appeal for funds through regular church chan-
nels for "children and other refugees in war-torn China and
Spain and for Christian German refugees."
Florida and the Merit System
IN Florida, where the only public employment service at
this writing is a skeleton organization set up by the
United States Employment Service to handle the placement
needs of public works projects, the new unemployment
compensation plan is stalled by the uncertainty about the
employment service. Back of this situation lies the story of
Governor Cone's attempt to disregard the merit system.
The affiliation agreement between the Florida employ-
ment service and the USES which expired June 30 has not
been renewed. The reason is the refusal of the USES to
remove as state director, John C. Emerson, who was "top
man" in the examination for the position, and the refusal
of the governor to permit the use of state funds for the
service unless it is headed by a director of his choice. As the
editor of The Arcadian (Arcadia, Fla. ) puts it, "The gov-
ernor has need of more places for campaign workers and is
determined to jar this bunch of plums loose if it is possible
to do so."
The merit system is one of the uniform standards of the
USES, in effect in every other state. The USES, W. Frank
Persons, director, refuses to relax its standards in the case
of Florida. Without an affiliation agreement, the state can-
not obtain federal funds under the Wagner-Peyser act.
Further, Florida employers are refusing to pay the unem-
ployment compensation tax levied by the 1937 legislature,
which also provided that such funds were to be disbursed
by the federal-state employment service.
Both the state employment service and the state unem-
ployment compensation plan are thus stalemated by Gov-
ernor Cone's flouting of the merit system. Under the law,
the governor has the appointive power. During his four-
year term he thus can block these public services by refus-
ing to make appointments or by making illegal appoint-
ments. It is up to Governor Cone.
"With Envy and Hope"
'""pHE District Medical Society, Washington, D.C. is
JL "viewing with alarm" the new Group Health Asso-
ciation Inc., formed by Washington employes of the Fed-
eral Home Loan Bank Board. Should this venture in "so-
cialized medicine" prove effective the society foresees that
many other government employes might band together in
similar fashion. It is said to be considering: legal action to
close down the association's clinic; forbidding its members
to practice in any hospital that accepts patients from the
association ; formulation, with the cooperation of the Ameri-
can Medical Association, of a plan for "post-payment health
insurance."
The association is a voluntary cooperative formed by and
for the Washington employes of the Federal Home Loan
Bank Board and its agencies. In the interest of the health
and efficiency of its workers the board granted the new
group $20,000 a year for two years to help it get started
and equip its clinic. More than half of the two thousand
eligible employes had signed up the day the association
started to function.
Fundamental features of the plan are "group payment"
and "group practice," with emphasis on preventive rather
than curative medicine. The cost per month to members is
$2.20 to single persons, $3.30 to married persons and their
families. Services available cover examinations including
X-rays, complete medical and surgical care including clinic
consultations and home visitation by association doctors,
ambulance facilities in emergencies and hospitalization for a
maximum of three weeks during a single illness. The asso-
ciation has a full time staff of six doctors, headed by Dr.
Henry Rolf Brown, and seven technicians and nurses. Any
member of the association may elect any or all of the bene-
fits offered and may go to an outside doctor if he so wishes.
At the meeting which inaugurated the new services Dr.
Richard C. Cabot of Cambridge hailed "this obviously
good thing" as a "godsend for people in between," and
Evans Clark of the Twentieth Century Fund said, "The
general public will watch the venture both with envy and
with hope."
DECEMBER 1937
383
The Social Front
Public Assistance
HPHE two million mark was reached in
the estimated total of individuals who
received public assistance in November
through the three programs of the social
security act. About a half million of these
are dependent children, a total which has
increased some 37 percent during the last
five months.
Analysis of old age assistance as of
June 1937 shows that of all persons over
sixty-five, in states having approved
plans, about 18 percent were receiving so-
cial security funds. This percentage var-
ied by states, from 0.5 in Tennessee to
57.8 in Oklahoma. According to recent
Social Security Board figures, there is a
wide range also in the amount of assist-
ance payments to the aged. At recent
calculations, Mississippi had the lowest
average payment, $3.69. It also had the
lowest average general relief payment,
$4.08. The lowest average payment for
aid to dependent children was in Okla-
homa which paid $9.61 ; to the blind,
Arkansas, with $8.87.
Even within a state there is often a
wide variation in allowances for old age
assistance. In California, which has paid
a consistently high average, two cases
were approved for $1 a month and nine
for $2. On the other hand, Mississippi,
with the lowest monthly average approved
two cases for as much as $12 a month.
All but six states have reported cases re-
ceiving as much as $30 and twenty-five
states have reported cases receiving less
than $5. The highest payment was made
by Massachusetts, $77; the lowest, less
than $1, by Louisiana.
Poo'rhouse Problems — Although
there seemed good reason to expect that
a full program of old age assistance
would much reduce or do away with pub-
lic homes for the aged, it now appears to
be not so simple.
In New York City, according to Com-
missioner of Hospitals S. S. Goldwater,
there has been no reduction in the popu-
lation of the city's homes for the aged;
in fact at the Welfare Island home there
are a hundred more residents than a
year ago. Two thirds of those who left
this institution, for old age assistance,
have had to be taken back. They gave as
reasons for their return: inadequacy of
allowance, lonesomeness, inability to re-
sist spending the allowance for alcohol,
need of medical care. The longest inter-
val before a return was five months. At
present more than 600 residents at the
home are eligible for assistance.
Washington, Georgia and Alabama
are among states which report progress
toward the ultimate elimination of coun-
ty homes. Use is being made of custodial
or nursing homes, particularly for those
in need of medical care; small district
boarding homes or placing out in private
homes; rehabilitation programs; hospi-
talization, sometimes in private institu-
tions; outpatient and health center ser-
vices. Some states have reported no
progress in eliminating their poorhouses
because of the inadequacy of assistance
allowances which makes it impossible for
the aged person to live independently.
Those Pension Plans — In widely scat-
tered parts of the country, notably Cali-
fornia, Washington, Oregon, Colorado,
Kansas, Florida, new stirrings of the
supposedly moribund Townsend Clubs
and their like have appeared. In Ore-
gon and in Kansas, such groups attempted
to bring about special sessions of the
state legislature in the interest of funds
for old age assistance. In Portland, Ore.
a district convention brought out crowds,
of unabated enthusiasm and size, still
alter their earlier goal of a $200 a
month pension for every citizen over
sixty years old, regardless of need. In
the state of Washington, what are known
as old age pension unions are forming.
Townsend groups have considerable
strength among representatives from
Washington and Oregon in the lower
house of Congress.
At a meeting in Denver of the National
Annuity League, a new Social Security
Improvement League was formed, its
purpose "to solidify all groups in the
United States in a united front to secure
enactment of federal legislation providing
for old age pensions." Delegates from
ten states, representing 147 units ap-
proved the new league, which aims at a
pension around $100 a month for every
qualified American citizen over sixty, ir-
respective of need.
While much of the "pension" agitation
appears to be traceable simply to the de-
sire to lay hands on more federal money,
some of it also springs from a misappre-
hension of the intent of old age assist-
ance. In Kansas interested groups stout-
ly maintain that their support of the
present governor and legislature was
based on the expectation of a no-means-
tcst, no-lien-giving plan for adequate pen-
sions for all citizens over sixty. The press
generally concedes that no such promise
was made, and that while liberalized old
age assistance in the state, more particu-
larly a pension plan, now appears to
hold much vote-getting power, the state's
present tax program could not carry the
burden. In Florida and California, simi-
lar misunderstandings have been sharp-
ened by private promoters who have
mulcted the gullible by promises of quick-
er pensions from membership in dues-
paying "clubs." Some even have offered
privately operated old age pension plans
which seem to be sheer hoax. In a bulle-
tin in which the Pennsylvania Depart-
ment of Public Assistance endeavors to
clarify the pension-assistance misunder-
standing, Karl de Schweinitz, secretary,
points out that the only state assistance
program which is in any sense a pension
is the program for the blind, and even
that is related to need.
Training Personnel — The whole story
of a shipshape program for training per-
sonnel in a public assistance agency has
been gathered into three mimeographed
reports by the Allegheny County, Pa.
Department of Welfare. Originally the
Mothers' Assistance Fund of Allegheny
County, this agency in 1936 was expand-
ed with the social security program. How
the agency met a pressing need for rapid
staff expansion, trained its own workers
when sufficient experienced personnel was
not to be found, and then assessed the
adequacy of the training job, is told in a
report of the student training committee
and a personnel report. The third book-
let, a manual for workers on the job,
includes the complete set-up of the three
assistance services for the county — his-
tory, policy and procedures. The two re-
ports are available at 25 cents each; the
manual at $1, or at $1.25 with index tabs,
from the department, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Relief
/"\N the same day that an economy-
minded Congress set up shop for a
special session, with ideas of placating
taxpayers and business, the U.S. Con-
ference of Mayors opened in Washing-
ton, with a meeting which sounded loud
warnings of more relief dangers ahead.
The billion and a half WPA dollars for
the present fiscal year, reluctantly ac-
cepted as an absolute top by Congress-
men who thought a billion would do, the
mayors called obviously inadequate for
the winter ahead.
So far as official pronouncements go,
WPA still is determined to keep within
the budget which the mayors attacked.
But that budget, allowing for a small
normal winter increase, was drawn with
the expectation of gradually improving
business conditions. The 10 to 20 percent
recession in employment in the past few
384
THE SURVEY
months, as estimated by the mayors, is
verified by sources less open to charges of
special interest.
To the question of increased municipal
contributions to relief, the mayors an-
swered that if conditions became even a
little worse, the local money available
would not meet even the present bur-
dens of caring for unemployables, and as-
sisting the jobless employables for whom
WPA at its present level does not have
room. The only answer which the may-
ors suggested is increased federal spend-
ing for relief — work relief or otherwise.
The conference condemned as illogical
any attempt on the part of WPA plan-
ners to determine in advance an absolute
figure for the amount of relief money to
be needed each month. Without a dis-
senting voice, the mayors passed a reso-
lution directing the conference executive
committee to survey conditions in Decem-
ber for report to the January 1938 ses-
sion of Congress on the real extent of
the country's relief needs. Other resolu-
tions called for a clear definition of "em-
ployables" and "unemployables"; urged
the CIO and AF of L to compose their
differences in the interests of industrial
recovery; offered the conference facilities
to the new Federal Housing Authority.
Priming — 'In the matter of "pump prim-
ing" of industry, WPA's purchases of
material, supplies and equipment had
reached by the end of September a cumu-
lative total of $503,681,761. Lumber and
its products constituted the largest item,
10 percent of the total, with cement, pav-
ing materials and textiles following in
order.
Surplus Commodities — In the size
and complexity of the whole "relief busi-
ness" in New York, most people, except
those close in to it, are unaware how
large surplus commodities still loom in
the total picture. For example, in Sep-
tember commodities with an estimated
retail value of $411,500 were distributed
by the Emergency Relief Bureau to cli-
ents of public and private agencies. Dur-
ing the same month the relief expendi-
tures of all private agencies reporting to
the Welfare Council totaled $148,600. As
a further evidence of the proportions of
commodity relief, the ERB in September
expended $26,094 for milk distributed
through private agencies to children and
to nursing or expectant mothers.
Strikes — • Chicago district relief offices
have had several recent sit-in strikes of
clients. While the requests made often
have been reasonable and adjustable, the
real problems began when the relief of-
fice became a sort of neighborhood lodging
house. Two strikes lasted two days and
a night each. Janitors had to remain on
night duty to look after property. Eating
lunches, climbing in and out of windows,
community singing and other disturb-
ances made acute difficulties in operating
the relief office, and police finally had to
persuade the sitters-in to leave at closing
time. No hard feelings were aroused, ac-
cording to local observers. One of the
strike issues was the requirement that
grievances be taken to a central public
relations department instead of being
heard at the neighborhood relief offices.
WHO PAID FOR RELIEF?
Millions or ooLians
o z * 6 8 to
FEDEKffL FUNDS.
LOCAL FUNDS
Courtesy of N. Y. Times
Protest — The National Unemployment
League, president, Darwin J. Meserole,
New York, is circulating a petition pro-
testing the "drastic curtailment of public
works by the federal government," and
"unemployed left to the mercy of local
governments and private charity." The
petition calls on the President to recom-
mend and the special session of Congress
to enact "legislation which will assure the
continuance of the federal public works
and relief program to the extent of the
need of the surplus unemployed workers
of the nation, securing from the state and
local governments such cooperation, fi-
nancial and otherwise as they are able to
contribute."
Among the States
*TpHE new Pennsylvania Department
of Public Assistance, while still in
process of consolidation and reorganiza-
tion, has been for several weeks in a
"state of investigation" by a committee
of three accountants appointed by Gov-
ernor Earle as a result of charges of in-
efficient administration, and demands for
the resignation of Karl de Schweinitz, its
secretary, brought by Mrs. Emma Guffy
Miller, Democratic national committee
woman. Mrs. Miller's charges have to do
largely with "over-spending," including
cost of administration, and the "packing"
of the state and county offices with peo-
ple from "Fray's school," meaning pre-
sumably the Pennsylvania School of So-
cial Work, Kenneth L. M. Pray, pro-
fessor of social planning and administra-
tion, affiliated with the University of
Pennsylvania. She calls on Mr. de
Schweinitz for a "list of the people in
your office and their political affiliations,"
and asks, "whose political set-up is this?"
The document in which Mr. de Schwei-
nitz replies with facts and figures to
Mrs. Miller's charges, line by line, is
prefaced by the statement, "My primary
interest at this time is to protect the pub-
lic assistance program from any possibil-
ity of political administration."
The Harrisburg Patriot, commenting
on the investigation says: "Scores of
Democratic politicians who have been
gunning for de Schweinitz's scalp for
many months are hoping that the relief
head will be replaced. Other groups be-
lieve that he should be retained as an as-
surance that politics will be kept out of
the relief system."
Meantime the Philadelphia Chapter
of the American Association of Social
Workers, with fewer than 10 percent of
its 500 members in the employ of the
state, has called on Governor Earle to
continue to fight off "patronage grabbers"
and to "protect the beneficiaries of relief
against the possibility of brutal coercion
or discrimination." Governor Earle will
return on December 16 from a trip to
Sweden and has promised a prompt de-
cision on the report of the committee of
accountants.
Opposition — The progress of reorgan-
ization of Michigan's state and county
public welfare set-up under laws passed
by the last legislature has been halted by
action originating in county supervisors
opposed to the new plan. The laws pro-
vide for a new state department of pub-
lic assistance, effective January 1, 1938;
new county organization abolishing vari-
ous local bodies, effective March 1, 1938.
Opponents of the reorganization circu-
lated petitions and secured enough signa-
tures to require a referendum at the No-
vember 1938 elections on the law creat-
ing the state department. This automati-
cally defers the effectiveness of the meas-
ure until the electorate has spoken. The
attorney general has ruled that it also
makes the law affecting counties similar-
ly inoperative with the exception of the
section which carries the appropriation.
While the opposition of the supervis-
ors was motivated, say observers, by
their own loss of jobs and patronage un-
der the new plan, it seems to have been
focused on the claim that social workers
were endeavoring to perpetuate them-
selves in office — "Common people cannot
get jobs under the new law."
DECEMBER 1937
385
Responsible Michigan officials are now-
faced with the question of administering
public assistance funds under rulings of
the Social Security Board. At present
old age assistance is under the State
Welfare Department and aid to de-
pendent children and to the blind under
the State Emergency Relief Administra-
tion, which was due to expire with the
organization of the new department.
This arrangement is likely to continue
during the suspension of the new laws,
and even if they should be nullified by
referendum, until such time as the legis-
lature provides a more satisfactory pro-
cedure.
One of Pennsylvania's new laws abol-
ishing local poor boards has likewise been
attacked, this time in the courts. The
lower court in which the case was
brought upheld the law but the decision
was appealed and at this writing no de-
cision has been handed down.
In-Service Training — An in-service
training program, arranged by the Indi-
ana Department of Welfare with the
advice and help of the Indiana University
Training Course for Social Work has
extended its services to 242 welfare staff
members in fifty-four counties.
The courses of this new program are
built around the everyday needs of coun-
ty welfare departments as expressed by
those on the job. Centers for eleven study
groups, of twelve to thirty members each,
are so distributed geographically that
few workers have to travel more than
thirty miles to the meeting place. Two
courses are given, one on the broader as-
pects of public welfare, the other for
work with the individual client. Twelve
monthly one-day meetings are held, with
two two-hour sessions on each class day.
Two additional classes have been ar-
ranged by the university, at Marion and
at Fort Wayne. These are non-credit
study courses in public welfare, meeting
three times a week for the first month
and once a month for the next ten. It is
expected that definite merit ratings in the
department will result from completion
of the courses.
Concerning Children
D Y a process of figuring worthy of a
top-flight statistician William H.
Matthews of the New York AICP has
arrived at the conclusion that if total days
care in AICP's 1937 fresh air camps had
been given to one child that child would
have enjoyed 137 years in camp.
Adoption Standards — The urgency
of better standards and uniform state
laws for child adoption was stressed at
the yearly weekend meeting of the Child
Welfare League of America. "There is
no single subject that during the last year
or two has aroused so much discussion
. . . The standards, the laws and pro-
cedures throughout the country show the
greatest variation," said C. C. Carstens,
director, who has just concluded a coun-
try-wide survey of the question.
Edwin D. Solenberger, league presi-
dent, summed up the situation as a seri-
ous one toward which an educational
effort must be made to arouse public
consciousness, for the protection of child
and foster parents. He urged uniform
state laws in every state to provide that:
Placement of children in foster fam-
ilies' homes for adoption be made pos-
sible only by the state and its administra-
tive units or by private agencies licensed
by the state;
Supervision by the state of child-placing
and home-finding be required in the case
of every petition coming up for adoption,
for the purpose of providing the judge
with reliable data on the basis of which
he may reach a wise decision ;
A period of time, preferably a year,
be required for the child to have been in
the home before adoption is consummated
with at least four visits during the year
from a representative of the agency.
Maternal Care — Better Care for
Mothers and Babies will be the subject
of a conference called by the U.S. Chil-
dren's Bureau for January 17-18, in
Washington, at the request of social and
health groups concerned over this coun-
try's bad record in infant and maternal
health.
Katharine F. Lenroot, chief of the
bureau, has appointed a planning com-
mittee for the conference headed by Mrs.
J. K. Pettengill of the National Congress
of Parents and Teachers.
Perilous Births — Pertinent at this
time on account of the developing mater-
nal and child-health program of the So-
cial Security Board is the study, Infant
and Maternal Mortality Among Negroes,
made by Elizabeth C. Tandy of the U. S.
Children's Bureau for publication in the
Journal of Negro Education. In the
United States each year more than 250,-
000 Negro infants are born alive and
more than 18,000 are stillborn. Each
year about 22,000 Negro infants die be-
fore completing their first year of life
(11,500 in the first month) and 2400
Negro mothers die from causes directly
due to pregnancy and childbirth.
The study shows that the mortality
rate of Negro infants in the United
States, 1933-35, was 86 per 1000 live
births as compared with 53 for white in-
fants. In every state with 500 or more
Negro live births annually the mortal-
ity rate of Negro infants was in excess
of that for white infants. In Delaware,
the District of Columbia and Oklahoma
it was more than double; in eighteen
other states as scattered as Florida, Kan-
sas, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio
Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia it
was more than 50 percent higher. The
maternal mortality rate for the period
1933-35 was 96 per 10,000 live births for
Negro and 55 per 10,000 live births for
white women. In the District of Colum-
bia and six states, California, Kentucky,
New York, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas,
the rate for Negro mothers in 1935 was
more than double the rate for whites.
Some, but not much, of the sting of
these findings is drawn by the assurance
of a downward trend in the rate for both
infants and mothers, this due largely to
the gradual adaption of the Negro to his
environment and to the increasing health-
fulness of his community. Only "to some
extent," Miss Tandy observes, can it be
associated with the development of mater-
nal and child programs since "such pro-
grams among Negroes in most sections
of this country are still in a beginning
or pioneer stage."
Training by Practice — To the tune
of an eight-hour-day, five days a week,
fourteen carefully selected students from
college and university departments of
sociology spent eight weeks of last sum-
mer in intensive training with the De-
troit, Mich. Children's Aid Society. All
had had at least three years of sociology.
They added four to six hours to their
college credit while learning how the
inside wheels go 'round in a private child
caring agency. They attended lectures,
did intensive field work, and were in-
troduced to agency procedures and poli-
cies. There was careful supervision of
the student workers and ample opportun-
ity for discussion. Study courses and
schedules had been worked out in detail,
with the guidance of experience in three
previous summer institutes. A well-
stocked reading room and selected bib-
liographies helped to complete the job of
introducing students to practice. At the
end of the period, two who had completed
their college work were taken on the so-
ciety's regular staff.
Paving the Way— When the Children's
Fund of Michigan was founded eight
years ago, there were in the state only
four county health departments and a
few municipal ones. Placing its major
emphasis on child health, the fund- set
about a steady development of single and
united county health departments. Dem-
onstration departments were established
and a general awakening of public in-
terest followed, mostly in northern
Michigan. Similar service was performed
for southwest Michigan by the W. K.
Kellogg Foundation which organized
health work in seven counties, while the
Children's Fund served other parts of
that section.
This year, for the first time, federal
subsidies for public health organization
were available. That stimulus, added to
the pioneering efforts of the two foun-
dations named, has culminated in the for-
mation of ten new county health depart-
386
THE SURVEY
U.S. Department of Labor
1933 1937
Two eloquent maps studied by the recent labor legislation conference — minimum wage laws of January 1, 1933, and October 1, 1937
merits, serving thirteen counties. Michi-
gan now has organized public health
work in fifty-three out of eighty-three
counties and anticipates complete "cov-
erage" in the not distant future.
Capitol Law — The District of Colum-
bia has a new adoption law wiping out
the thirty-year-old statute which did no
more than establish the right of the
adopted child to inherit property from
the adoptive parents. The new law,
drafted by a committee of the Juvenile
Protective Association and approved by
sixteen organizations, provides for an in-
vestigation of the stability of the adopt-
ive home, of the child's fitness for adop-
tion, and of the reasons for the sur-
render of the child by its natural parents.
It protects the real mother from having
to surrender her child before it is six
months old, and provides for a trial place-
ment in the adoptive home. The bill as
introduced required that all investiga-
tions, whether by the Board of Public
Welfare or another "qualified social
agency," be reported to the court by the
board ; as passed it provides that reports
from "recognized religious and fraternal"
organizations shall be accepted.
Labor Legislation
p"EDERAL legislation on wages and
hours, with provisions eliminating the
products of child labor and industrial
homework from interstate commerce,
was unanimously recommended by the
fourth annual labor conference held in
Washington late in October at the call
of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins.
The conference was attended by repre-
sentatives of governors of thirty-eight
states. Other resolutions accepted by the
conference urged the states to enact
measures putting supervision of labor
standards of apprenticeship in state labor
departments ; advocated state laws to
eliminate industrial homework; favored
ratification of the child labor amend-
ment. In closing its three-day session, the
conference also asked the Secretary of
Labor to have her department study the
problem of the older worker, to appoint
a national advisory committee, and draft
a program designed to break down exist-
ing age barriers.
Federal Bill — Action by the House
Labor Committee in the opening days of
the special session of Congress indicated
a vigorous fight to secure passage of the
wages and hours bill. The measure has
reposed in the Rules Committee since
August. The House bill differs ma-
terially from the Senate bill, approved
in the regular session last summer.
Minimum Wage — As a basis for de-
termining minimum wages, a survey of
wages and hours of Colorado women
workers is being made by the state in-
dustrial commission, assisted by the
Women's Bureau. . . . Mandatory mini-
mum wage decrees were issued last
month for ten Massachusetts industries
and for the clothing and accessories busi-
ness in New -Hampshire. ... A minimum
wage for women and minors in Rhode
Island's garment industry has been issued
under the terms of a new state law
which provides for a mandatory mini-
mum wage at a future date. The direc-
tory order has no penalties, but employers
are required to furnish payroll records
to the State Labor Department, which
may be the basis for the mandatory
order. ... In Connecticut, minimum
wages will soon be established in several
of the lower paid industries, including
cleaning and dyeing, pocketbook, and
novelties. As a test, minimum wages
have already been established in a branch
of the clothing industry.
Walsh-Healy — The first year's experi-
ence under the public contracts act is
reviewed in the current Labor Informa-
tion Bulletin. Under its terms, every
government contract of $10,000 or more
must carry a signed agreement by the
manufacturers to abide by the basic labor
provisions of the act, including the eight-
hour day and the forty-hour week. Mini-
mum wages are determined by the Secre-
tary of Labor, whose policy it has been
to concentrate on the low wage indus-
tries. Minimum rates set have ranged
from 32/^2 cents an hour for southern
operatives making men's underwear to
67/4 cents an hour for the men's hat and
cap industry. The government's need for
materials and supplies ranges from struc-
tural steel to blankets, clothing and to-
bacco. The largest contracts subject to
the act in its first year were textiles
valued at $45 million.
Record and Report — Two timely
new Pennsylvania pamphlets: Minimum
Fair Wage Law, a digest and explana-
tion, with lively "labor-graphic" charts;
Children Preferred, a study of child
labor in the state, with photographs and
case stories. Both from the Department
of Labor and Industry, Harrisburg.
The Labor Front
AN analysis of cases handled by the
"^ New York office of the National
Labor Relations Board has been made
public by Elinore M. Herrick, regional
director, to show that the AF of L and
the CIO have fared equally under the
Wagner act. The report, dated Novem-
ber 10, covers 1350 cases involving re-
quests for collective bargaining recogni-
tion, or charges of unfairness against
employers. Of these 743, 55 percent,
were filed by CIO unions; 515, 38.2 per-
cent, by AF of L affiliates; the rest by
independent unions or by individuals. Of
the CIO cases, 18 percent (133) were
withdrawn or dismissed; 19 percent (98)
of the AF of L cases. In the complaints
in which the board assumed responsibility
for obtaining compliance with the
Wagner act, 61.5 percent of the CIO
cases, involving 75,000 workers, and 55.1
percent of the AF of L cases, involving
32,000 workers, were settled without
trial. The office has had only four or five
cases, Mrs. Herrick reports, in which
the AF of L and the CIO have been
pitted against one another in the same
establishment.
Picketing — Unions of restaurant, cafe-
teria and catering employes, affiliated
DECEMBER 1937
387
with the AF of L, are protesting against
recent jail sentences and fines meted out
by New York City magistrates to strike
pickets charged with disorderly conduct.
The unions claim that there has been
a change in police policy which interferes
with "the right to picket." City officials
maintain that there has been no change
in policy, and that they only seek to curb
"rowdyism," "bullying" and "disorderly
groups that travel from point to point."
The recent trouble has arisen in connec-
tion with a prolonged strike by employes
of a chain of automats.
Meatpacking — A drive to organize the
200,000 workers in the meatpacking in-
dustry of the country is announced by
the CIO. Van A. Bittner, who has been
Chicago regional director of the Steel
Workers Organizing Committee, will di-
rect the campaign which will focus on
the great meatpacking centers, Chicago,
Omaha and Kansas City.
Hospitals — A hospital labor contro-
versy in Seattle was settled last month
by arbitration. The controversy arose in
a demand for higher wages, made eight
months ago by hospital workers belong-
ing to the Union of Building Service
Employes. The board granted wage in-
creases to most of these employes, and
fixed $22 a month as the maximum living
costs that could be charged against "liv-
ing in" workers. Janitors received the
highest increase, $23 a month, making
their minimum pay $100 a month, less
maintenance. Wall-washers were given
the same minimum rate. Simultaneously
with the awards, the hospitals volun-
tarily increased the pay of nurses to $75
a month, plus maintenance. The increases
total about $150,000 a year to the 1400
hospital employes. Rates will be increased
approximately 75 cents a day by all
Seattle hospitals, making a ward rate of
$4.25 a day. . . . Contending that strikes
in hospitals are not illegal, the American
Civil Liberties Union and the Interna-
tional Juridical Association have submitted
briefs amicus curiae on behalf of the
Hospital Employes Union of New York
in its appeal against a temporary injunc-
tion granted the Jewish Hospital in
Brooklyn last August. [See Survey
Graphic, August 1937, page 435.]
Against Crime
A LREAD Y an impressive record of '
accomplishment has been chalked up
by the Prison Industries Reorganization
Administration, created by executive
order of President Roosevelt in Septem-
ber 1935. [See The Survey, July 1936,
page 195.] Operating only in states which
have invited study and in cooperation with
state authorities, at last reports PIRA
had surveyed prisons, prison industries
and the penal system generally in twenty-
two states. Recommendations submitted
from completed surveys now are in vari-
ous stages of acceptance and accomplish-
ment. Louis N. Robinson of Swarth-
more, Pa. has succeeded Judge Joseph N.
Ulman as head of the directing board.
In accord with the executive order
creating PIRA, which directed it, among
other things, "to provide an adequate and
humane system of rehabilitation for the
inmates of (such) institutions," the
studies have probed widely into causes
and problems related to the major con-
cern of prison idleness. The body of laws
affecting penal and eleemosynary institu-
tions of each state surveyed has been
studied. Extensive studies are being made
of state-use industries now in operation
in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New
York, Indiana and Virginia.
With a few notable exceptions, educa-
tional work in state penal institutions has
been found "widely neglected" or under
"inadequate direction." Working mate-
rials and plans for states to use in devel-
oping educational programs have been
assembled by PIRA. Through the co-
operation of the National Probation As-
sociation, the administration has made
surveys of probation and parole systems
in each state cooperating. Already some
improvements have resulted.
News Notes— During 1936, 916 chil-
dren under sixteen years of age were
confined in county jails in Georgia, ac-
cording to reports submitted by sheriffs
to the state department of welfare. Of
these, 453 were white and 463 Negro. In
1935 there were 984 such cases; in 1934,
604; and in 1933, 414. It is pointed out
that detention in these county jails is
particularly undesirable because most of
the institutions are old and lack adequate
facilities for segregation or sanitation.
On the theory that "the boy who blows
a horn never will blow a safe," the Chi-
cago Boys' Club is teaching hundreds of
boys in its five clubhouses for under-
privileged youth how to play musical in-
struments. Since music was added to the
"curriculum" six hundred new recruits
have been drawn to the clubhouses, with
their nightly programs of shop work,
dramatics and athletics.
Signs of Improvement — A decrease
of 9 percent from 1935 to 1936 in cases
coming before juvenile courts reporting
to the U. S. Children's Bureau is indi-
cated in a preliminary analysis of data.
Where 69,808 cases were reported in
1935, there were 63,320 in 1936. Data
include reports from seven entire states,
the District of Columbia and from thirty-
two courts in eighteen other states. All
together serve an area of about 35 per-
cent of the population of the United
States, which is estimated to include more
than 7,500,000 children of ages to come
under juvenile court jurisdiction.
Boys' cases, constituting 85 percent of
the total, decreased by 10 percent in 1936
while girls' cases dropped only 5 percent.
Fifty-three percent of all these children
were fourteen and fifteen years of age,
the girls on the average older than the
boys. The 1936 total, as reported, was
substantially lower than in any previous
year of the recorded period, 1929-36.
In Print — The first issue of Correc-
tional Education, a new project of the
committee on education of the American
Prison Association, appeared with an
October date-line. It is crammed with
interesting facts and suggestive articles
for developing educational programs in
penal institutions. The publication is pro-
duced by a subcommittee of APA with
Austin H. MacCormick in the double
role of chairman and editor. Now
planned as a quarterly, its publication is
financed by a grant from the American
Association for Adult Education, a Car-
negie Corporation enterprise.
Federal Offenders, reporting the work of
the federal Bureau of Prisons for 1935-
36, presents its annual review of statistics
of federal prisoners, parole and proba-
tion. Available from the superintendent
of documents, Washington, D. C. . . . In
a reprinted series of articles, Floyd Tay-
lor, staff writer for the New York
World-Telegram tells how parole looked
to a newspaper reporter. The newspaper,
which had been critical of parole, was in-
vited by the New York State Parole
Board to send a reporter to look over
the whole agency, from A to Z. (Parole,
by Floyd Taylor. From the executive de-
partment, New York State Division of
Parole, Albany.)
Compensation
DOSSIBLE changes in the unemploy-
ment compensation sections of the so-
cial security act, were discussed last month
by George E. Bigge, member of the
board, before a conference of unemploy-
ment compensation administrators. Pro-
posals being studied by the board, he
stated, include: provisions for migratory
workers who hold jobs in several states in
the course of the year; provisions for
workers entitled to benefits in states where
funds have been exhausted by earlier ap-
plications; unemployment assistance after
scheduled benefits payments have been
made; disability benefits.
Private Plans — What has happened to
private unemployment-benefit plans since
the social security act went into effect is
summarized in the current Monthly La-
bor Review. In 1934, the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics found sixty-eight such
plans in operation, twenty-two established
and maintained by individual companies,
five by collective agreement between
workers and employers, forty-one by
trade unions. Fifteen of the first type
have been given up because of recent
legislation, though seven companies, all
located in New York, are continuing pay-
ments until January 1, 1938, when bene-
388
THE SURVEY
fits under that state's law begin. All the
joint agreement plans remain in force.
Twenty-four unions replied to an inquiry
by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Au-
gust, and of these, seventeen have kept
their unemployment benefit plans active.
In general, the plans still in force have
not been materially changed, though two
have kept the lowered benefit rates intro-
duced during the depression.
Personnel — In Tennessee, a staff to
take charge of the payment of benefits in
the state after January 1 is being recruit-
ed from a list of eligibles provided by
the federal government after civil ser-
vice examinations. . . . Governor Holt of
West Virginia has appointed a board of
three members to review and adjust dis-
puted claims for benefits under the state
unemployment compensation measure.
Members of the board will receive annual
salaries of $4000. . . . Elmer F. Andrews,
New York State industrial commission-
er, announces the resignation of Glenn
A. Bowers, executive director of the di-
vision of placement and unemployment
insurance; effective July 1. Mr. Bowers,
who was appointed in June 1935, has
asked that he be relieved of all adminis-
trative and supervisory responsibility for
the remainder of his time in office, to de-
vote himself to "the solution of certain
major problems which will inevitably
arise in the future administration of the
unemployment insurance law." Paul Sif-
ton, deputy industrial commissioner, has
been temporarily assigned to the general
administration of the division. . . . Gov-
ernor Lehman has appointed a three-
man Appeal Board of Unemployment In-
surance for New York.
Delinquents — Field examiners of the
Maine unemployment compensation com-
mission recently found 553 delinquent
employers owing $55,954 in contributions,
and 522 cases of underpayment, amount-
ing to $9282. They also discovered over-
payments totaling more than $2400 which
had been made by 236 contributors. . . .
The first Connecticut tax warrants is-
sued for non-payment of unemployment
compensation contributions were served
last month. Twelve warrants, in amounts
totaling $3800, were served by deputy
sheriffs. The warrants authorize the sher-
iff to levy on the taxpayer's property or
commit him to jail in default of payment.
Stability — The relative stability of pri-
vate employment in the District of Co-
lumbia is the basis for a proposal to
Congress to give the local unemployment
compensation board discretionary author-
ity to vary the unemployment compensa-
tion tax rate yearly or every six months.
According to the Washington Star, re-
serves at the end of the first six months
of 1938 will amount to some $9 million.
With maximum benefits $240 a year,
and the top estimate of eligible unem-
ployed persons 10,000, the maximum need
for benefits would be $2,400,000.
New Movies — The Social Security
Board has in preparation a series of
short motion pictures dealing with unem-
ployment compensation and job-place-
ment provisions in the states. Each film
is to consist of a brief general introduc-
tion, the same for all states, followed by
a graphic exposition of the specific pro-
visions of the law in the state where the
film is to be exhibited. Thus far thirteen
states have requested that such a film be
prepared. First showings will probably
be held this month.
Schools and Education
qpHE effort of the New York City
A public schools to "reclaim" truant and
pre-delinquent children is being strength-
ened by the assignment of 293 WPA
teachers to clinics for the physical and
psychological examination of problem pu-
pils, and to recreational clubs for truants
in areas where there is inadequate play
space. The effort of the remedial work
with truants is to determine the factors
which make children want to stay away
from school. The clinics work in coopera-
tion with teachers, parents, and with other
community agencies.
Chance to Explore — A new plan of
work for students undecided in their life
plans, or not working for degrees is be-
ing tried at Ohio State University this
year. Without modifying requirements
for entrance to the university or stand-
ards of work, students are given oppor-
tunity to explore various fields under the
guidance of experienced counselors. Once
admitted to the university, these students
are permitted to elect courses in any de-
partment for which previous training has
qualified them. The only fixed require-
ments are courses in military science,
physical education and hygiene. Students
following an exploratory course may at
any time transfer to a course leading to
a degree.
Workers' Education — The year-
round school for workers, established by
the regents of the University of Wiscon-
sin last June, is now enrolling students
in communities in all parts of the state.
The new undertaking, an outgrowth of
the university's summer school for work-
ers, offers continuous opportunity for or-
ganized study, with class terms of about
ten weeks. Teachers will go out from the
university as "modern circuit riders,"
each with a group of communities in
which to teach day or night classes in
parliamentary law, public speaking, trade
unionism, labor psychology, collective bar-
gaining, consumer problems, and so on.
. . . Brookwood Labor College, Katonah,
N.Y., has been closed for good, due to
lack of funds. Started in 1921 to train
union leaders, B'rookwood has had a
stormy career, with doctrinal difficulties
in both faculty and student groups. A li-
quidation committee has charge of the
buildings and the 53-acre campus.
Reading Clinic — In the second year
of its work, the reading clinic of New
York University has students ranging in
age from six to sixty years — elementary,
highschool and college students, and also
adults of various professions who have
reading difficulties. The clinic is equipped
to make tests to determine whether or
not a student should be examined by an
eye specialist. It also uses a three-shutter
device enabling the pupil to read under
controlled conditions that develop both
speed and comprehension. In addition,
students receive individual instruction
adapted to their needs.
Study and Report — The American
Youth Commission, 744 Jackson Place,
Washington, publishes Surveys of youth,
a bulletin listing current studies of "what
is happening to young persons." ... A
Continuing Heritage, which is the 1937
report of the president of Antioch Col-
lege, Yellow Springs, Ohio, is a stimulat-
ing review of the "Antioch program,"
and the educational progress being made
under it. ... An objective, factual sum-
mary of youth problems in fifty-eight
countries and what is being done to meet
them is offered in Youth: A World Prob-
lem, prepared by W. Thacher Winslow
for the National Youth Administration.
Price 25 cents from the superintendent of
documents, Washington, D.C.
Old Age Insurance
*T^HE Advisory Council on Social Se-
curity will meet again December 10
and 11, to consider whether reserve ac-
count provisions or other features of the
security act should be revised, and if so,
how. At its meeting the first week in
November, the council adopted the sug-
gestions of its subcommittee: that outside
experts be invited to present their views
informally at the next meeting; that, at
the December meeting, the council em-
phasize problems of taxation, reserves
and benefits; that the Social Security
Board be requested to prepare a state-
ment on the pros and cons of the prob-
lems to be considered.
Labor Problem — Two probational
employes in the Baltimore office of the
Social Security Board, dismissed last
May, have been conditionally reinstated.
Four other workers, dropped at the same
time, had previously been returned to
work. Baltimore officials of the board
held that the dismissals were caused by
unsatisfactory work and conduct. The
DECEMBER 1937
389
employes claimed that they were dis-
missed because of union activity. William
Savin, executive of the Family Welfare
Society, Washington, acted as arbitrator
and recommended three months' trial re-
employment.
Unclaimed Numbers — The Reno,
Nev., field office of the Social Security
Board is trying to locate workers who
applied for social security accounts and
then failed to call for their account cards.
Out of some 30,000 numbers assigned to
Nevada workers, about 500 have not been
claimed. Most of these cards belong to
miners who changed their places of em-
ployment after making their applications.
A New Racket— The Social Security
Board has asked the Department of
Justice to prosecute bogus collectors of
funds in connection with the old age in-
surance title of the security act. Several
instances of such petty racketeering have
been reported to the board, which an-
nounces that it has no "old age benefits
collectors," "old age insurance collectors,"
or any other kind of collectors or finan-
cial agents. The board states: "We wish
to caution everyone against making any
payment whatsoever to persons repre-
senting themselves as agents of the board,
and who guarantee the payment of old
age insurance."
Latest Figures — As of November 9,
the Social Security Board had 317 field
offices open and in operation. Applica-
tions for social security numbers totaled
35,366,865. About 29,000 claims for
lump sum benefit payments had been ap-
proved by the board and certified to the
Treasury.
Welfare Budget
JPXACT knowledge of where the en-
tire welfare dollar comes from and
where and how it goes is "X", the un-
known, in most communities. The Rich-
mond, Va. Community Fund decided to
find out, by compiling the city's total
yearly welfare budget, just exactly what
was contained in "X."
It was no mean job. Richmond's wel-
fare budget was found to come from chest
and non-chest private contributions,
church gifts, endowments, fees, earnings,
memberships, and city, state and federal
appropriations. Some duplications and
some inefficiencies in recording and ac-
counting undoubtedly affect the total,
but, insofar as it can be determined, in
1936. it was in round figures $5 million,
or $27 per capita. Of this, the munici-
pality furnished $2,140,847; the state
$440,206; the federal government, $1,-
589,924. The balance came from the as-
sorted sources before-mentioned, with
about 12 percent of the total from the
Community Fund.
Analysis showed that almost half of
the total welfare expenditure in that
year went for relief and case work;
about 20 percent for health agencies; 15
percent for recreation and informal edu-
cation; not quite 15 percent for public-
safety and the care of delinquents and
criminals.
Expenditure for children was small —
about $200,500 for the year, of which
$64,000 came from the Community Fund,
a smaller total from the combined city,
state and federal budgets and the bal-
ance from earnings and miscellaneous
sources.
The largest single item in the local
chest budget was $153,607 for relief and
case work; about $11,000 more than for
informal education and recreation. The
largest item in the state-contributed bud-
get was $247,926 which was spent for
health — $164,673 of it for mental health.
The federal government supplied negli-
gible amounts for health, care of children,
and delinquents, but put up $1,389,480
for family relief.
Negroes constitute 29 percent of Rich-
mond's population. On a numerical basis
they received their proportion of the to-
tal health expenditures and more than
their share of relief money, but there
was a wide variance in that distribution
when analyzed by separate agencies.
Although Richmond's Negro popula-
tion has a tuberculosis rate of 165 per
100,000 compared to a rate of 38.8 for
whites, the municipality spent $9704 for
hospitalization of tuberculous Negroes
and $134,842 for whites. Expenditure
for Negroes under "recreation" heads
was low in proportion to the Negro pop-
ulation, a disadvantage which is empha-
sized by the fact that their use of the
city's parks is strictly limited by tradition.
For dependent Negro children a total
of $21,640 was the year's budget; for
dependent white children approximately
eight times as much. The city's bill for
care of Negro delinquents and criminals
topped the equivalent bill for whites by
some $7000.
Against Disease
A N advisory committee on prevention
•**• of pneumonia mortality recently was
:alled to Washington to confer with U. S.
Surgeon General Thomas Parran. "With
more than a half million cases of pneu-
monia occurring annually and with a
fatality rate of over 16 percent, the pre-
servation of a hundred thousand lives is
a grave challenge to public health admin-
istrators throughout the country," Dr.
Parran said, in summoning representa-
tives of medical colleges and health
agencies from many parts of the country.
With pneumonia (all forms) now ex-
ceeded only by heart disease and cancer
as a cause of death in the United States,
interest is growing in the possibilities of
reducing its mortality through the use of
anti-pneumococcic sera, promptly and
properly applied. In a recent issue of
The Health Officer, Dr. Claude Head,
discussing "a brighter outlook for the
control of pneumonia," summarizes for
health officers the means which science
has gained for its control. He includes:
certain knowledge of thirty-two types of
pneumococci which produce the disease ;
a speedy way of determining the types
of infecting organism; a specific serum
therapy for at least those types that re-
sult in a high percentage of deaths; and
new means of producing effective sera at
a lower cost. He suggests as watch-
words: early diagnosis, early typing and
early serum treatment. "For the majority
of patients," he says, "this means early
recovery."
A number of state health departments,
of which Massachusetts [see The Survey,
November 15, page 358] and New York
have been outstanding, provide free facili-
ties for typing and distribution of sera.
Through the efforts of the New York
State Medical Society and the state
health department's bureau of pneumonia
control, pneumonia institutes for physi-
cians have been conducted recently in five
localities. A drive against pneumonia has
been undertaken in New York City, fol-
lowing a plan recommended by a special
committee of the New York Academy of
Medicine.
War on Cancer — The fight against
cancer, with scientific research and public
education as joint weapons, steadily gains
impetus. The Chicago Tumor Institute,
the sixth in the United States to be de-
voted exclusively to research in cancer
and methods for its treatment, was
launched in late October. It is to be
financed entirely with funds contributed
by Chicagoans. Incorporated as a non-
profit organization and headed by scien-
tists of world renown, the institute will
offer instruction and assistance to physi-
cians, surgeons, clinics and hospitals in
diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Max Cutler
who has been head of the tumor clinic
at Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, has
been named as director.
The Indianapolis, Ind. City Hospital
recently received a gift of $100,000 to
establish and endow a cancer clinic. Th?
founder of the International Cancer Re-
search Foundation at Philadelphia, Wil-
liam H. Donner, recently presented to
the University of Pennsylvania $200,000
to establish a new radiological and X-ray
department in the University Hospital
for the study of malignant diseases.
Headway is being made in lay educa-
tion by the American Society for the
Control of Cancer and many local groups
of similar purpose. The society reports
that "progress towards the development
of an aroused interest in the control of
cancer on the part of the American pub-
lic, has been greater in the two-year
period, 1935-37, than in the two decades
preceding it." The Women's Field Army
of the society reported from its first
390
year's campaign over 100,000 enlistments,
gained with the active cooperation of
organized women's clubs.
The New York City Cancer Com-
mittee, with perhaps the largest single
job of education to do, in its last two
annual campaigns has rallied the support
of four thousand new donors. At Christ-
mas and the year round the committee,
in common with other local groups, uses
as its source of funds the sale of pads
of package labels at $1, each sticker bear-
ing the flaming sword insignia and the
slogan, "Fight Cancer With Knowledge."
Health and Sanitation
SAFEGUARDING the nation's milk
supply is put on the "must" list, for
the benefit of the dairy industry as well
as for the public's health, in a recent
report on milk control in America, issued
by the American Municipal Association.
With improved farm conditions, it is
pointed out, the time now is ripe for
introduction and improvement of milk
regulations.
Safeguards already achieved against
milk-borne infections are listed in the
report. Only a negligible proportion of
the raw milk and a rapidly decreasing
percentage of the pasteurized milk now
consumed comes from non-tuberculin
tested cows. Of recent years delivery
practices involving the transfer of milk
from an open container have improved
greatly. Sealed, single service containers
and closed dispensing apparatus are on
the increase in retail establishments. Uni-
form standards set up by the U. S. Public
Health Service, representatives of the in-
dustry and of federal, state and local
government agricultural authorities have
found wide local acceptance. An ordi-
nance recommended by the U. S. Public
Health Service has been adopted by 700
communities.
The report lists as improvements yet
to be made: elimination of Bang's disease,
a cause of undulant fever; more accurate
reporting of milk-borne infection out-
breaks; uniform application of milk con-
trol regulations to all phases of produc-
tion, processing and distribution.
For Healthy Cities — All restaurant
associations in New York City have been
notified that after January 1 milk to be
consumed on the premises must be dis-
pensed in original containers or drawn
from sealed dispensing devices satisfac-
tory to the department of health. . . .
The city health department is cooperating
with the department of markets, weights
and measures and the U. S. Bureau of
Agricultural Economics in a campaign
(or the grading of meat with exhibits and
demonstrations for housewives, in dis-
trict health centers.
New Haven, Conn, recently enacted
an ordinance requiring the sterilization
of all drinking glasses, dishes, silverware
YOU CAN BE SURE OF THE BEST
IF YOU SUFFER FROM
"ACID INDIGESTION"
Alkalize this fast "PHILLIPS" Way
Symptoms such as nausea, "up- of a teaspoonful of the liquid
set stomach," gas, "acid head- form. Almost immediately you
aches" due to acid indigestion enjoy relief.
can now be relieved easily. ., « ., . ,. . „
Always avoid acid indigestion
discomfort this easy way after
heavy meals or late hours.
Keep a bottle of genuine
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Just alkalize your excess stomach
acidity quickly by this fast
Phillips' method:
Take two teaspoons of Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia 30 minutes
after each meal, or two Phillips'
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tablet containing the equivalent
Milk of
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carry a box of Phillips'
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PHILLIPS
OF MAGNESIA
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
(Dibrom-oxymercuri-fluorescein-sodium)
After a thorough investigation of the evidence for and against at the
close of the last period of acceptance, the Council on Pharmacy and
Chemistry of the American Medical Association has again reaccepted
(1935)
MERCUROCHROME, H. W. & D.
Literature on Request
HYNSON WESTCOTT & DUNNING, INC.
Baltimore, Md.
and other utensils used in preparing and
serving food and drink in public eating
places. The ordinance specifies methods
of washing, and requires rinsing by im-
mersion for at least five minutes in water
heated to a minimum of 170 degrees
Fahrenheit. A fine for violations, careful
inspection, and an approval card when
the ordinance has been complied with are
provided. The card is subject to with-
drawal if standards are not maintained.
Professional
HpAKING a look at its record of recent
years, the National Conference of
Social Work found that it had been at-
tended by a total of 25,964 convention-
goers over the period 1931-36 and that
this total includes 19,070 different per-
sons. In other words, three out of four
(77 percent) attended only one meeting
of the six, only 3.4 percent attended
three or more of the six meetings, and
only ninety-four faithful souls (0.5 per-
cent) were veterans of all six. Average
attendance from 1931-36 was 4327 while
from 1924-27 average attendance was
3007. However, for the past three years,
the actual attendance has been in excess
of six thousand. The National Confer-
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MTDMONTHLY
391
ence of Social Work now is rivalled in
size by only four conventions of profes-
sional character in the United States,
that of the American Medical Associa-
tion alone being consistently larger.
Fellowship — A few fellowships for
training in extramural psychiatry are
available through the National Commit-
tee for Mental Hygiene, 50 West 50
Street, New York. Fellows will be as-
signed for one or two years to a selected
child guidance clinic, the choice and plan
to conform to the student's special inter-
est. These fellowships, provided in part
by the Commonwealth Fund, are designed
to meet a definite need for personnel in
this field. Apply to Dr. George S. Steven-
son, of the committee, for full details.
New School — North Dakota has estab-
lished new training facilities for social
work to fill its need for trained workers.
Both experienced workers and recruits
may enroll in the new graduate courses
in social work which have been estab-
lished in the department of sociology at
the University of North Dakota, with
financial help from the state welfare
board. Margaret Reeves, formerly of
New Mexico, will conduct the courses.
and Maude Barnes of the Children's Ser-
vice, Inc., of Saint Paul, Minn., the field
practice work.
The real genesis of these courses is
credited to Pearl Salsberry, former case
work supervisor for the North Dakota
FERA, now in Hawaii, who drove 250
miles from Bismarck to Grand Forks,
N. D. each weekend for over two years
in order to teach the classes which would
provide the state with a few trained so-
cial workers.
By Any Other Name — By a process
of naming and renaming, the American
Prison Association once more has as an
affiliate an organization yclept National
Conference of Juvenile Agencies, although
it is not the organization of the same
name which a year or so ago withdrew
from affiliation with the association. That
first organization after its withdrawal
took the name of National Association
of Training Schools and, since it defined
its purposes as social rather than correc-
tional, decided to meet under the wing
of the National Conference of Social
Work. Meantime a number of persons
concerned with institutions for juvenile
delinquents who had not favored with-
drawal from the prison association, or-
ganized into it as the section on Training
School Education. Now, since the first
group has dropped the original name,
there is no reason why the second group
should not have it if it wants it — and
apparently it does.
In Print — Resembling in every partic-
ular except its subject matter, the popu-
lar little digest magazines, the 1937
campaign booklet of the Saint Paul Com-
munity Chest, by Louise Clevenger, chal-
lenges reader interest with its title, On
the Spot With the Critical Citizen. Even
the print-sated eyes of The Survey's edi-
tors were moved to interested reading of
the story of Mr. Critical Citizen and
how (1) he puts the town's social
workers "on the spot" with the toughest
of critical questions and (2) they remove
themselves from the spot with celerity
and credit and leave a conviction of the
worth of social work behind them.
The Chicago Council of Social Agen-
cies printed just eight hundred copies of
its Social Service Year Book, which re-
views the history of that city's social
work for the past year. If you want a
copy, send $1 to the council, 203 North
Wabash Avenue, Chicago.
Junior League
person who hopes to share
11 in the responsibility for shaping the
community's welfare program must know
just as much about the public welfare
services of his city as about those ren-
dered by the private agencies." Mrs.
Peter L. Harvie, president of the Asso-
ciation of Junior Leagues of America,
with these words struck the keynote for
the Junior League Welfare Conference,
held last month in Milwaukee.
There were delegates from 145 leagues
in all parts of the United States, from
Canada and Honolulu, in an attendance
of more than 300. This was the third
of the triennial welfare conferences held
by the league to give professional guid-
ance and technical information to dele-
gates who are responsible for welfare
programs and projects in local leagues.
This year's conference aimed particu-
larly to break down the earlier tendency
of league social welfare activities to "es-
tablish a limit to their responsibilities
marked by an imaginary line outside the
public welfare department's door," and to
interest themselves primarily in league
projects. Three outstanding executives
of public welfare in the United States
were called in as featured speakers: Dor-
othy Kahn of the Philadelphia County
Rel'ief Board; Fred K. Hoehler of the
American Public Welfare Association;
Frank Bane of the Social Security Board.
Each addressed a general session, and
conducted a lively forum where Junior
Leaguers quizzed the speakers on public
welfare whys and wherefores of concern
to the informed citizen. After Mr. Bane's
address on problems of public welfare
administration, its development and the
importance of its future efficiency, Char-
lotte Whitton, director of the Canadian
Welfare Council, set up a parallel pic-
ture of public welfare functioning in
Canada. Dorothy Kahn urged Junior
Leaguers to participate as informed in-
terpreters of welfare services in their
communities. Fred Hoehler pointed the
intimate personal concern, to people of
all economic levels, in general social se-
curity.
The association took advantage of the
exceptional opportunities afforded by Mil-
waukee as a "laboratory" of public and
private social work to emphasize field
trips for the convention-goers. Visits were
made to the publicly-administered system
of social centers, the county family court,
the mental hygiene clinic and a variety
of other agencies. In a series of elective
discussion groups, the subjects which
proved most popular with Junior Lea-
guers were community chests and coun-
cils, placement bureaus for volunteers,
household employment, occupational ther-
apy and rehabilitation.
Housekeeper Service — An outstand-
ing demonstration of "housekeeper ser-
vice," carried on for four years by the
New York Junior League in cooperation
with the Children's Aid Society, now
has become established as a regular part
of the society's program. As is the cus-
tom in such cases, league members who
have helped with the demonstration will
continue their active interest in the pro-
ject. Last year the service helped sixty-
seven families who either were mother-
less or needed a "substitute mother"
when the real one was incapacitated or
overburdened.
About Trade Unions — A feature sec-
tion of the Junior League Magazine for
November 1937 is a Primer of Trade
Unions. "Because it clarifies a subject
which is an immediate part of our lives,"
the editors present a well-written brief
history of the movement, including the
Wagner act and labor boards. A trade-
union dictionary defines often-used labor
terms, and a bibliography reflects many
shades of opinion on the subject.
People and Things
HpHE new president of the Brooklyn,
*• N. Y. Bureau of Charities, Mary
Childs Draper, is believed to be the first
woman in the country to head a com-
munity federation of such magnitude.
Since her graduation
H^BHU^^HHH from Vassar Col-
lege, Mrs. Draper
has been active as a
volunteer with the
bureau, one of the
oldest and largest
welfare agencies in
the United States.
For three years, she
has been a member
of the board of the
city's Emergency Relief Bureau. She is a
board member also of the National Con-
sumer's League, the Welfare Council of
New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the
People's Institute, and the United Neigh-
borhood Guild of Brooklyn.
Partly Resigned — So reluctant were
President Roosevelt and Secretary of the
Treasury Morgenthau to accept the res-
ignation of Josephine Roche as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury that, accord-
ing to a press statement, her position
will not be filled for an indefinite period,
in case she finds it possible to return.
The President has asked Miss Roche to
continue as a member of the interdepart-
mental committee for the coordination
of health and welfare activities of the
federal government, of which she has
been chairman.
Said Miss Roche, "I may be back. I
can't prophesy." She has returned to di-
rect the affairs of the Rocky Mountain
Fuel Company of which she was presi-
dent at the time of her appointment to
the Treasury in November 1934.
New World To Conquer — Lucy
Randolph Mason has resigned her posi-
tion as general secretary of the National
Consumers' League, to which she came
as Mrs. Florence Kelley's successor in
1932, and has returned to her native
South to join its new labor movement.
With headquarters at the Atlanta office
392
THE SURVEY
of the Textile Workers Organizing
Committee of the CIO, she travels
through the South as a "contact woman"
between the union and non-labor groups.
She writes: "My job is trying to change
a small segment of public opinion. It
varies from interviews with editors and
other opinion makers to walking in a
picket line for a chance to talk with
workers; from sending news letters to
the secular and religious press to making
talks to union meetings — and occasion-
ally acting as go-between for union
organizers and company officials."
New Yorkers — Two recent marriages
of interest to social workers are: Flor-
ence Seder to Allen T. Burns, both of
Community Chests and Councils, Inc. ;
Jean Forsch to Hugh R. Jackson, assist-
ant executive secretary of the State
Charities Aid Association.
Stanley Isaacs, president of the United
Neighborhood Houses and a member of
the executive committee of the Welfare
Council has been elected borough presi-
dent of Manhattan. . . . Mrs. George
Schiff Backer, a director of Henry Street
Settlement and prominent as a board
member of a number of civic and social
agencies, recently was appointed to the
City Board of Child Welfare, succeeding
Helen Lehman Buttenwieser, whose
term has expired.
Lionel J. Simmonds, director of the
Hebrew Orphan Asylum, recently cele-
brated his thirtieth anniversary as a
worker with the agency.
The Welfare Council of New York
City recently has added to its staff Hila
Thompson, as secretary of the child wel-
fare division succeeding Grace A. Reeder;
and Elinor Page, as a field secretary in
regional organization, assigned to the
Sara Clapp Midtown Council of Social
Agencies. Miss Thompson has been di-
rector of the Westchester County, N. Y.
Social Service Exchange and secretary
of Westchester's Council of Social Agen-
cies. Miss Page, from the community or-
ganization field, is the first appointee
under a new plan of cooperation be-
tween regional councils and the Welfare
Council.
Honors — Thomas Jesse Jones' twenty-
five years of service to the Phelps-Stokes
Fund, first as agent and 'later as educa-
tional director, were recognized at the
fund's annual meeting with resolutions
of appreciation and with the presentation
of a bound volume of tributes from more
than a hundred educators the world over.
Commenting on Dr. Jones' particular
usefulness in the fields of Negro educa-
tion and race relations, in southern
United States, Africa and the Near East,
Editor Paul Kellogg of The Survey
wrote : "Marco Polo, Benjamin Frank-
lin, and Johnny Appleseed would have
to be rolled into one to get the qualities
of your itinerant missions for enlighten-
ment— for those you touched in your
travels and for us at home."
The Roosevelt Memorial Association
presented its 1936 medals to: James
Hardy Dillard, southern educator, for
"distinguished service in the field of so-
cial justice"; to Helen Keller; and post-
humously to Anne Sullivan Macy, who
was Miss Keller's teacher. . . . "In re-
cognition of her humanitarian work"
Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt recently re-
ceived the Grand Cross of the Cuban
Red Cross Society. . . . The first award
of the Clement Cleveland Medal, re-
cently established by the New York City
Committee for the Control of Cancer,
was given to Henry R. Luce, president
of Time, Inc., for the March of Time
film, Conquering Cancer. The medal will
be given each year for outstanding work
in the campaign to control cancer.
A feature of the thirty-third annual
session of the Massachusetts Conference
of Social Work held the end of last
month in Boston, was a luncheon in
honor of Francis Bardwell who is retir-
ing from the post of superintendent of
the bureau of old age assistance of the
State Department of Public Welfare.
Dr. Richard C. Cabot was the speaker
who "toasted" Mr. B'ardwell's twenty-
nine years of service to the state.
Emeritus — At her own insistence, Lil-
lian D. Wald, founder of Henry Street
Settlement, has retired from the active
presidency, to which John M. Schiff, for
several years vice-president, has been
elected. Miss Wald becomes president
emeritus "without specific duties," said
the resolution of the board of directors,
"except to continue that spirit of tireless
devotion which is and always will be an
inspiration to us all."
News Notes — General John J. Persh-
ing has agreed to serve as chairman of
the American Social Hygiene Associa-
tion's national anti-syphilis committee,
which aims to obtain a half million
dollars to continue and expand the asso-
ciation's educational program.
Thomas J. Turley, of South End
House, Boston, has been elected presi-
dent of the B'oston City-Wide Boys'
Work Conference, which serves forty
thousand Boston boys. Julian D. Steele,
of Robert Gould Shaw House was
chosen first vice-president.
Mayor Neville Miller of Louisville,
Ky., a favored speaker at recent meet-
ings of the National Conference of
Social Work and of the American Public
Welfare Association, has resigned to ac-
cept appointment as assistant to Presi-
dent Dodds of Princeton University.
Francis H. Hiller, field director of
the National Probation Association, is
on leave of absence until next July, to
give full time to survey work for the
federal Prison Industries Reorganization
Administration, in which he has been
engaged for some months. [See page
388.] . . . Gilbert Cosulich of San
Francisco has joined the association's staff
as publicity director and legal assistant.
Fannie French Morse, for nearly fifty
years a worker for girls in state institu-
tions, has retired and will make her
home in Winter Park, Fla. For the past
fourteen years she has been superinten-
dent of the New York State Training
School for Girls at Hudson.
Staff changes in Pittsburgh have
brought to the Children's Service
Bureau, Harry A. Dobkin, lately in
training at the Judge Baker Foundation,
Boston, and Pauline B. Hughes formerly
with the Louisville and Jefferson County
Children's Home, Louisville, Ky. . . .
Newcomers at the Pittsburgh YWCA
are Chesta A. Mitchell of Janesville,
Wis. and Carolyn E. Allen of Mil-
waukee.
The director of social service of the
Washington University Clinics and Al-
lied Hospitals of St. Louis, Mo. now is
Mary J. Taylor from Presbyterian Hos-
pital, New York. She succeeds Edith
Baker, who is with the U.S. Children's
Bureau.
Florence Cassidy, recently with the Na-
tional Bureau of Immigrant Welfare in
New York, is now nationality secretary
of the Detroit Council of Social Agen-
cies, doing special work with the foreign
born. Leo Gallin of Baltimore is another
newcomer on the same staff.
The 1938 delegate conference of the
American Association of Social Workers
will be held in Seattle, Wash. June 23-25,
just prior to the opening of the Na-
tional Conference of Social Work.
The National Conference of the Pro-
gressive Education Association will be
held February 23-28 in New York.
Deaths
VIRGINIA POTTER, who for sixty years
strove to better the living conditions of
working girls in New York City. She
was prominent in the New York League
of Girls' Clubs since its founding in
1885; organizer of the Manhattan Trade
School for Girls, of Holiday Houses,
Inc. near Port Jefferson, L. I. and of
the first independent hotel exclusively for
women in New York.
FRANKLIN CHASE HOYT, for nearly
twenty years justice of the Children's
Court of New York City; president of
the Big Brother movement, 1911-25; and
ardent proponent of other movements for
the welfare of youth.
ROBERT W. IRWIN, associate secretary
of the St. Louis Bureau for Men; for
more than thirty years a friend and
partisan of the homeless.
DECEMBER 1937
393
Social Services
HANDBOOK FOR FIELD WORK STU-
DENTS (FAMILY WELFARE), by Mar-
garet Cochran Bristol. University of Chi-
cago Press. 53 pp. Price 50 cents postpaid
from the press.
A revised edition (July 1937) of a hand-
book of Chicago's public and private relief
agencies, designed to assist local student
workers in their orientation to conditions
and procedures in the family welfare field.
PUNISHMENT VERSUS TREATMENT
IN THE CURE OF THE CRIMINAL, by
Harvey L. Long. Reprinted from the John
Marshall Law Quarterly. Price 10 cents,
from the author, Illinois Department of
Public Welfare, 608 South Dearborn Street,
Chicago.
"Old school" and "modern school" argu-
ments relating to penal practice are com-
pared and appraised.
ILLINOIS PERSONS ON RELIEF IN
1935: A SURVEY OF PERSONS RECEIVING
ASSISTANCE FROM THE ILLINOIS EMERGENCY
RELIEF COMMISSION IN 1935, by Elizabeth
A. Hughes. Sponsored by Illinois ERC,
1319 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago;
WPA Project No. 165-54-6018.
This recently published survey, begun
as a work relief project, was undertaken
in 1935-36 with the chief object of se-
curing information on occupational char-
acteristics and background of employable
persons on the commission's rolls.
HOUSEKEEPER SERVICE, by Josephine
Erkens. Federation of Social Agencies, 519
Smithfield Street, Pittsburgh, Pa. 31 pp.
Price 25 cents.
A detailed discussion, based on experi-
ence, of the practical development of this
useful service device.
Community
ORGANIZING THE COMMUNITY FOR
DELINQUENCY PREVENTION. 28 pp.
Price 50 cents single copy, less in quantity
from Community Chests and Councils, Inc.,
155 East 44 Street, New York.
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN DUVAL
COUNTY. 97 pp. Price $1 from the Coun-
cil of Social Agencies, Duval County, 230
East Forsyth Street, Jacksonville, Fla.
These two pamphlets present the official
record of a study of families of 100 juve-
nile delinquents, from which was drawn a
recent article in The Survey [November
15, page 344]. The Community Chest
pamphlet also gives the conclusions drawn
by the 1937 Blue Ridge Institute; the
local publication supplies the fuller report.
COMMUNITY PLANNING FOR SOCIAL
WELFARE, by Walter L. Stone. Informal
Education Service. 64 pp. Price $1 from the
service, 2622 West Ashwood, Nashville,
Tenn.
A record of the experience and methods
by which a small city studied its social
services and needs, resources and oppor-
tunities by means of the processes of group
work.
MUST WE HAVE SLUMS? Edited by
Charles Y. Harrison. Published by the New
York City Housing Authority, 10 East 40
Street, New York; reprinted from the New
York Post. Copies free from the authority.
A vivid presentation of New York's
THE PAMPHLET SHELF
slum housing problem; not an official
document.
THE NEGRO IN SYRACUSE, N.Y. A
STUDY IN COMMUNITY RELATIONS, by
Golden B. Darby. 32 pp. Price 75 cents
from the Dunbar Association, Inc., Syra-
cuse.
This short study is designed particularly
to picture Negro life in an urban com-
munity where Negroes make up only a
small segment of the population.
DEVELOPMENT OF A LEISURE TIME
PROGRAM IN SMALL CITIES AND
TOWNS, by Ella Gardner. U. S. Children's
Bureau. 13 pp. From superintendent of docu-
ments, Washington, D. C.
First steps m planning community leisure
time activities for all ages.
Educational
LECTURES ON PROGRAM BUILDING,
by Philip L. Seman. From 1937 Midwest
Conference and Institute of Adult Educa-
tion at Lake Geneva, Wis. Distributed bj
Lecture Reporting Service, 440 South Dear-
born Street, Chicago.
Four lectures on building an adult edu-
cation program, from a recent conference
sponsored by the Adult Education Coun-
cil of Chicago in cooperation with the
American Association for Adult Educa-
tion.
PUBLICIZING HUMAN NEEDS, by Mary
Swain Routzahn. Reprinted from the Public
Opinion Quarterly, 6 pp. Price 10 cents
from the Social Work Publicity Council, 130
East 22 Street, New York.
Explains some of the reasons back of the
attitudes and policies which mold social
work publicity.
PUBLIC INFORMATION NUMBER, Jour-
nal of Social Hygiene, October 1937. 60 pp.
Price per single copy. 35 cents from the
journal, 50 West 50 Street, New York.
This entire issue of the journal is de-
voted to suggestions of methods and us-
able information for the drive against
syphilis.
Health and Hygiene
MENTAL HYGIENE IN OLD AGE, by
Flora Fox, Abram Kardiner, Gladys Fisher,
Karl Bowman, Frederic Zeman, and Alfred
Cohn, Family Welfare Association of
America. Price 40 cents, less in quantity,
from the association, 130 East 22 Street,
New York.
Discusses the problems and adjustments
of old age, and the tensions resulting there-
from in the normal family.
CHILD LABOR AND THE NATION'S
HEALTH, by S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D.
Christopher Publishing House. 32 pp. Price
50 cents from the publisher, Boston, Mass.
For many years a contributor to the
work and literature of the fight against
tuberculosis, the author, in this booklet,
points to the dangers of tuberculosis as a
by-product of child labor.
HOSPITAL CARE AND INSURANCE, by
C. Rufus Rorem. American Hospital Asso-
ciation. 71 pp. Price 50 cents from the asso-
ciation, 18 East Division Street, Chicago.
Subtitled "an historical and critical analy-
sis of the periodic payment plan for the
purchase of hospital care (group hospitali-
zation)," this pamphlet includes history,
method and foims and documents relating
to administration, as well as statistics on
group hospitalization in the United States.
The Consumer
CONSUMER'S COOPERATION, A SOCIAL
INTERPRETATION, by Harry A. Laidler; THE
CONSUMER'S COOPERATIVE MOVE-
MENT, A FACTUAL SURVEY, by Wallace J.
Campbell. 64 pp. League for Industrial De-
mocracy. Price 15 cents direct from the
league, 112 East 19 Street, New York.
Both discussions, in one pamphlet, pro-
vide useful background information on the
cooperative movement.
SWEDISH CONSUMERS IN COOPERA-
TION, by Anders Hedberg. Cooperative
Union, Stockholm, Sweden. 95 pp. Price 25
cents postpaid of the Cooperative League of
the USA, 137 West 12 Street, New York.
An attractive, illustrated story as well
as a thorough study of the present coopera-
tive movement in Sweden. The booklet
gains in interest because, though written
in English, it was produced in Stockholm.
FINANCING THE CONSUMER, edited by
John H. Cover. Studies in Business Ad-
ministration, University of Chicago School
of Business. 114 pp. Price $1 direct from
the University of Chicago Press.
Report of a conference on consumer
financing, held at the university in May
1937.
General
PREPARATION FOR SEEKING EMPLOY-
MENT, by Howard Lee Davis. John Wiley
and Sons. 39 pp. Price 25 cents direct from
publishers, New York.
A specific guide to the young man seek-
ing a job, giving the "do's" and the
"don'ts" and the reasons behind them.
LEARNING TO BE GOOD PARENTS, by
Eleanor Saltzman. Manthorp and Burack,
Inc., 8 Arlington Street, Boston. 55 pp.
Price 25 cents.
Parent education reduced to the simple
terms of informal talks. The author long
has been associated with the child study
and parent education program of the State
University of Iowa.
BUILDING THE INTER-AMERICAN
NEIGHBORHOOD, by Samuel G-uy In-
man, National Peace Conference, 8 West
40 Street, New York. 63 pp. Price 35
cents, paper, or 75 cents, cloth, from the
conference.
The story of the Inter-American Con-
ference for the Maintenance of Peace, told
by the executive secretary of the Com-
mittee on Cooperation in Latin America,
who last year was adviser to the American
delegation to the conference.
LETTER OF AN OLD BOLSHEVIK, THE
KEY TO THE Moscow TRIALS. Rand School
Press, 7 East 15 Street, New York. Price
25 cents from the publisher.
Translation from the Russian original
of a letter from a veteran member of the
Bolshevist Party (whose name is with-
held) throwing light on the puzzling pro-
ceedings of the Radek-Piatakov trial of
January 1937 and its predecessor in Au-
gust 1936, which led to the execution of
many former Russian Bolshevist leaders
394
THE SURVEY
Readers Write
Action in Alabama
To THE EDITOR: Perhaps you will be
interested to hear how the article, These
Public Welfare Boards, by Robert T.
Lansdale [see The Survey, March 1937,
page 67] stimulated action here in Ala-
bama. Mr. Lansdale's challenge was for
"... a candid facing of the realities that
exist . . . What responsibilities do boards
execute well and what badly? . . . Why do
boards with similar powers in law differ
so markedly in their methods of execut-
ing their responsibilities?"
After reading and discussing the article
the commissioner of the Department of
Public Welfare asked members of his
field staff to submit evaluations of the
various local boards in the line of Mr.
Lansdale's challenge and in relation to
the public welfare program as a whole.
We have in Alabama sixty-seven county
boards of public welfare with 479 mem-
bers. Of these 152 are women, forty-five
are members of county governing toards,
twelve are city officials including five
mayors. Other officials on boards include
twenty-one superintendents of education,
twenty-four probate judges and four state
legislators. On the non-official side are
nineteen lawyers, seventeen physicians,
two professors, six clergymen, and a large
representation of business men, land own-
ers, farmers and so on. So you see we
have a pretty representative body and it
is not surprising that we found in it wide
individual variations in experience, lead-
ership, responsibility, ability to function
in a group and capacity for growth.
We found that, with few exceptions,
board members had been well selected.
Their attention now, with the period of
organization detail over, should be fo-
cused on thoughtful study of the public
welfare program and of community needs
and resources to the end of better inter-
pretation and the development of services
and standards.
It was clear that the quality of the
director had definite bearing on the qual-
ity of service rendered by the board mem-
bers. A director with leadership, able to
see the various possibilities for service in
each board member, and consciously and
consistently demonstrating the value of
case work to the program, almost invari-
ably had an active board taking its respon-
sibilities seriously. Where such team-
work existed there was a minimum of
the situations that limit the effectiveness
of the program, such as: political and
personal pressure in selection of person-
nel, the concept of the program as one of
public assistance only, failure to empha-
size preventive and protective service and
to see possibilities of service which might
be developed by new legislation.
The evaluations of local boards inspired
by Mr. Lansdale's article has been valu-
able experience for all of us. It has
widened our understanding of each other
and given us a fresh approach in our re-
lationships. As a process of growth we
recommend it to departments elsewhere.
BESS ADAMS
Director, Bureau of Field Service
Alabama State Department of
Public Welfare
Prison Education
To THE EDITOR: I was very much inter-
ested in reading the article, Horse Col-
lars and Prisons, by James V. Bennett
in the September issue of The Survey,
since it portrayed a condition with which
I have lately had contact. I quite agree
with Mr. Bennett that a work program
is essential to the emotional and physical
well-being of prisoners, but I am dis-
appointed that no consideration was given
to the educational aspects of prison rou-
tine. That perhaps is another article.
In that connection your readers might
be interested in a program of instruc-
tional sound films which I developed for
Austin H. MacCormick, New York City
Commissioner of Correction; Ruth E.
Collins, superintendent of the House of
Detention for Women; and Richard A.
McGee, warden of the New York City
Penitentiary. Its basis is the contribu-
tion that properly prepared sound mo-
tion picture material can make to prison
educational efforts by surmounting many
barriers to human learning in general
and the restrictions of institutional rou-
tine in particular. Such a program would
seem to be a partial solution to the critical
situation in institutions where legisla-
tion has prohibited or curtailed certain
industries and where formal or tradi-
tional educational programs are weak or
undeveloped.
A limited number of copies of the re-
port prepared for the officials mentioned
is available on request from Survey
readers interested in the subject.
Research Associate H. A. GRAY
Erfii Picture Consultants
250 West 57 Street, New York
That Typing Business
To THE EDITOR: What a pity that all
social workers are not journalists or even
just plain unglorified typists of the file
clerk variety! Queries I.R.A. of Califor-
nia, [see The Survey, October 1937, page
330] "Why doesn't even one case worker
try to type her own records, to avoid the
bugaboo of the allotted dictation period?"
Bugaboo, indeed! Allotted dictation per-
iod? Alas and alack! Stenographic assist-
ance? Loss of dignity? Well, well!
Several of the younger, more vigorous,
successful case workers I know take ap-
plications for any category you care to
mention; they make the investigations, dig
up all the verifications and collaterals,
cooperate with the WPA, NYA, county
commissioners, health department; stir
up committee programs to appeal to all
members and even to keep some of them
awake after heavy lunches; take care of
all correspondence, filing, and recording.
They are one-man offices in which every
worker is at least quintuplets.
Why doesn't some one agency or case-
worker try it? Why, indeed!
"PANCHA VILLA"
Department of Public Welfare
Deming, N. Mex.
To THE EDITOR: I have been typing my
own case records for years. It began
when I was with a family agency where
work so piled up on the stenographers
that sometimes we case workers had to
wait days for the transcriptions of sum-
maries. One day, needing a summary in
a hurry, I recalled that at one time I had
been fairly fluent on a typewriter and
decided to try it. I had to scout to find
an idle machine and at first I was slow.
But within a short time I got my speed
up and found that writing my own rec-
ords and letters was extremely satisfac-
tory. Only rarely since have I dictated
either one. I have timed myself on oc-
casion and believe that I honestly can say
that the time involved in typing a record
is scarcely more than that consumed in
dictating the same material.
As for my "dignity," I certainly have
no sense of losing it. On the contrary I
take great pride in my ability to turn out
tidy reports and letters, an ability which,
I add modestly, is not unenvied by my
associates. MOLLIE J. CAMERON
Florence Crittenton Home
Houston, Tex.
Cooperation Invited
To THE EDITOR: As an attempt on the
part of academically trained psychologists
to present an objective, scientific report
of the problems under investigation, the
Society for the Psychological Study of
Social Issues, affiliated with the Ameri-
can Psychological Association, has author-
ized the preparation of a yearbook en-
titled, The Psychology of Industrial Con-
flict. The responsible committee includes
Theodore Newcomb, Bennington College,
Bennington, Vt. ; Keith Sward, People's
Press, New Kensington, Pa. and myself
as chairman. We are interested in se-
curing fresh, concrete field data or docu-
ments bearing upon this problem from
workers, employers, public officials, and
social scientists working in specialized
fields. A tentative outline is available
and qualified persons who wish to cooper-
ate in this enterprise either by submit-
ting hitherto unused materials or by
contributing to the writing of parts of
the text should communicate with any of
the committee.
GEORGE W. HARTMANN
Teachers College, Columbia University
New York
DECEMBER 1937
395
Book Reviews
Spiritual Core
CHRISTIANITY AND SEX, by Richard C.
Cabot. Macmillan. 78 pp. Price $1 postpaid
of The Survey.
T N recent writings and addresses Dr.
Cabot has given marked service by
pointing out the relation of healthful
living not only to medicine and social
welfare, but to religion and Christian
experience. His deep faith in the good
life here on earth and the eternal life of
the spirit, in the worthwhileness of
human personality and all that relation-
ship to God may mean, is always clearly
evident.
In this little volume, the vexed ques-
tion of sex is treated as perhaps never
before by a writer in the scientific field
whose professional accomplishments com-
mand deep respect. He refuses to solve
problems usually dealt with in such writ-
ings— how to sublimate one's insistent
erotic impulses, how to overcome in-
fantilisms in the lovelife, and so on —
but says, "Seek ye the Lord." For only
by fostering higher affections can un-
worthy ones be overcome or redirected,
and the love of God is the highest affec-
tion in human experience. If this relation-
ship with "a power outside ourselves
which makes for righteousness" can be
brought about, then minor problems and
conflicts resolve themselves.
This may seem a counsel of perfection,
but Dr. Cabot does not leave us there.
He is explicit with regard to certain ways
of teaching purity in sex life. Knowledge
of facts is useful, but not enough. Fear
of consequences is no way to point to
healthier and truer relationships. Educa-
tion through the natural sciences is good
in its way, but the only education of the
success of which we can be sure is the
"imparting of life by greater life. . . . The
essential thing by which we learn is not
talk but practice, the contagion of per-
sonality." He refers to the main thesis
of an earlier book, The Meaning of
Right and Wrong, when he speaks of
making contracts with oneself and others
and of observing them strictly. Sharing
enthusiasms, at the same time maintain-
ing certain reserves ; controlling the im-
agination; recognizing the union of physi-
cal and spiritual, these are positive sug-
gestions. The last chapter, Christianity
and Growth, contains much helpful
thought. "Any behavior that does not
further the growth of those concerned
starts decay that no one wants." In this
and other references to growth, the au-
thor recognizes a psychological fact
which is becoming increasingly the con-
cern of students of child psychology and
the psychology of personality.
The book is too short for Dr. Cabot
to say how his somewhat idealistic sug-
gestions may be carried out, and there
are various characteristic assertions with
which mental and social hygienists may
not agree, but for the resourceful teacher,
willing to recognize that "Jesus Christ,
the supreme energizer of our growth, is
therefore the testing spirit of our social
morality," the book is richly rewarding.
ELEANOR H. JOHNSON
Hartford, Conn.
Social Work on the Record
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL CON-
FERENCE OF SOCIAL WORK, INDIAN-
APOLIS 1937. Published for the conference
bv the University of Chicago Press. 699 pp.
Price $3 postpaid of The Survey.
TN a plump tan and green volume with
type blessedly clear and easy to read,
the Indianapolis conference takes its place
on the bookshelf, in the history of Amer-
ican social work.
From the hundreds of papers which for
a long Indianapolis week sent conference-
goers scurrying from meeting to meeting,
the editorial committee, Wayne McMil-
len chairman, selected sixty for the rec-
ord. Included are seven papers presented
at general sessions, thirty-seven at
section meetings and fifteen special com-
mittee meetings. Say the editors, 'Time-
liness, universality and usefulness with-
in the total field were the sole deter-
minants in choosing material for publica-
tion." Even with that definite measuring
rod the committee's task still was monu-
mental not to say courageous, requiring
discrimination and judgment in evaluating
the great mass of material before them in
relation to the continuing stream of social
work. Thus the proceedings become a
clear and dignified reflection of the major
preoccupations of social workers in this
year 1937 and of the trends that emerge
from them. GERTRUDE SPRINGER
Saddlebag Doctors
DOCTORS ON HORSEBACK, by James Thomas
Flexner. Viking. 370 pp. Price $2.75 postpaid
of The Survey.
^ REPORTER'S book, not an his-
torian's, but nevertheless a classic
for the physician and with the allure of
Strachey for other readers.
The seven personalities developed out
of the past by today's curiosity and the
sympathetic interpretation of an inheri-
tor, if not a practitioner of medical art,
are saddlebag doctors in life and thought,
typical of their times, some of the very
best in the romantic spirit of their days;
others, exemplars of human egoistical
exhibitionism which makes for publicity.
Of these men we have no right to expect
substantial new facts or unfamiliar epi-
sodes, but their lives were so vivid and
dominant of medical events, then and
after, that this lively approach and quite
objective analysis is altogether refresh-
ing and delightful.
Our perennial need is for the John
Morgans, the William Beaumonts, the
Daniel Drakes. We have our share in
each generation of the likes of Benjamin
Rush and W. T. G. Morton and always
will. The Ephraim McDowells and the
Crawford Longs, so contrarily qualified
and yet so precious, will be prized when-
ever the individual rather than institu-
tional or bureaucratic physician can play
his essential role. The qualities of reti-
cence and dignity are particularly notable
to us who suffer from almost universal
personal promotion by self-advertising.
The stories in the book run quickly
and with good vocabulary and phrasing.
Yet we would wish to be spared "blame
it on" and "outlawing of disease," hold-
overs from newspaper English.
This new contributor is welcome to the
company of amateur medical historians.
May he continue to decorate the field de-
veloped by the scholarship of Garrison
and Sudhoff and their successors. Let us
hope Mr. Flexner will try his hand on
more recent medical lives and illustrate
the social scene of the twentieth century
as he has that of the eighteenth and
nineteenth through highlights of medicine.
New York HAVEN EMERSON, M.D.
The World Over
EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL WORK, by Alice
Salomon. 265 pp. Price $3 ordered direct of
publishers. Verlae fur Recht und Gesellschaft,
Zurich, Switzerland.
QR. SALOMON'S book breaks new
ground in the field of social work.
We have had a few — a very few — books,
like Dr. Sand's Health and Human Prog-
ress, which have reviewed the activities
of social work on an international scale,
perhaps the most specific of them being
the International Handbook on Child
Care and Protection published by the
Save the Children Fund of London. But
none of those has at once attempted to
describe the cultural philosophies of the
different nations as they affected social
work activities and as these in turn have
been reflected in the organization and
functions of their professional schools.
Dr. Salomon is peculiarly well fitted to
undertake this pioneer task by her long
leadership in education for social work
in the Germany before the Nazi, as well
as by her extensive personal acquaintance
with social workers of other lands than
her own. It adds a bitter touch of irony
that just as her book comes off the press,
the Nazi authorities who on coming into
power confiscated her school in Berlin,
should have exiled her from Germany.
She is now a woman of international
fame, without a country.
The book consists of two distinct parts.
The first is an historical and philosophical
explanation of social work in more than
twenty countries where there are schools
of social work. This part is a truly unique
396
contribution to the understanding of what
is called social work, as perceived in
many countries by a German woman of
keen powers of observation and unusual
capacity for social insight. Of course,
some of it is not flattering to particular
countries. It would not be as realistic as
it is, if it were all commendatory. With
some of it, representatives of any one
country probably will disagree. But so
far as I have knowledge of the source
material Dr. Salomon has used, it is an
honest and searching study from which
we in this country as well as social work-
ers elsewhere may benefit greatly.
The second part amounts practically
to a directory, almost encyclopedic in
scope, of the 166 schools in the thirty-
two countries in which Dr. Salomon
found records. It consists of the name,
location and executive of each school,
conditions of admission, object of the
school and its curriculum, together with
the number of its students and graduates
for the academic year reported. It will
come as one of many surprises that in
so many countries — Belgium and France,
for example — schools are under govern-
mental regulation and subsidy, and cer-
tain sorts of positions in governmental
services are open only to their graduates.
Dr. Salomon has laid down a base line
from which the growth of professional
education in future social work can be
measured. FRANK J. BRUNO
Washington University, St. Louis
Training Plus
PSYCHIATRIC SOCIAL SERVICE IN A
CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, by Ruth M. Gart-
land. University of Chicago Press. 105 pp.
Price $1.25 postpaid of The Survey.
' I 'HIS is a frank and clear report of a
two-year experiment in the integra-
tion of psychiatry and pediatrics, at the
Bobs Roberts Memorial Hospital for
Children, University of Chicago Clinics.
It gives an exceedingly hopeful picture
not only because of the results obtained
but because of its point of view.
"The contribution of any psychiatric
clinic depends upon the quality of its
personnel. It is essential that its workers
have more than intellectual training and
experience. They need, in addition, the
capacity to relate themselves to another,
to follow the thoughts and feelings of
that other with a view to meeting his
problems." Meaning, to feel with
people not merely to like them. Consid-
ering recent trends in psychiatric social
work thinking, Miss Gartland observes,
"What seems most important is that we
are changing in feeling as well as in
thinking." Unsuccessful cases, closed in
the past with the notation, "Client un-
cooperative," might be closed today with
the phrase, "Worker uncooperative and
too reforming." "Focusing upon what
we wish to know, we block our clients
from a spontaneous expression of what
they feel and think and so fail to see
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
cyf (jift Suggestion
Handicrafts of the Southern
Highlands : : : *AHen H.
This new book has already charmed itself into a second printing. Interesting
text and delightful illustrations — eight of which are in full color — make it an
ideal solution of the gift problem for discriminating friends. $3.00
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
130 East 22d Street
New York
A study in fiction form of
the making of a criminal
DOWN the DARK STREET
By JESSIE FENTON
"A vivid and compassionate tale of a mis-
guided adolescent which does what penologists and their
case histories do and that additional thing which is the
creative part of a novel . . . bringing facts to a vital
life. . . . This entirely convincing story of a young criminal
stands in sharp contrast to the popular picture of all
desperadoes." — New York Herald Tribune.
"This outstanding first novel is a human
document written with great clarity, with artistry as well
as knowledge, with sensitivity as well as vigor. The story
moves swiftly to its inevitable ending. It ranks with the
best novels and plays dealing with the youthful American
criminal." — New York Times.
$2.50 at all bookstores
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
them as they really are." It is Miss
Gartland's belief that there is treatment,
positive or negative, in every contact and
that research is better served if treat-
ment is the paramount consideration.
Any social worker will find here case
material and analysis exceedingly helpful
in checking her own technique; in de-
veloping attitudes of patients and par-
ents to this kind of service; and in main-
taining a fresh and questioning approach
to methods and values. For, Miss Gart-
land says, "Whether we really serve de-
pends not so much upon what we do as
on how we do it." Special skill was re-
quired in many cases where it was not
the child who needed treatment but the
In answering advertisements please mention SURVEY MIDMONTHLY
397
mother; or the parents, who had kept
the child a problem to solve their own
unconscious resentments. The child's
symptoms were revealed most often to
the physicians, but it was to the psychia-
tric social worker that parents often em-
phasized their concerns about them-
selves.
A children's hospital seems to be a
strategic place to render psychiatric
service, says Miss Gartland, for early
treatment should be more effective and
of shorter duration than later. Students
approach treatment with more hope and
understanding when their initiation is in
such a clinic as this one rather than as
formerly, through a study of the
psychoses. As one student expressed it,
'Before studying psychiatric social work,
I listened but I did not hear." This
encouraging report makes it a pleasure
to hear.
Unfortunately the little book is
printed in type inexcusably small. The
reader may have to be treated for eye-
strain, but it will be worth it.
New York MILDRED SAWYER
Demonstration of Amity
MIXING THE RACES IN HAWAII, by Sidney
L. Gulick. Hawaiian Board Book Rooms. 220
pp. Price $2.50 cloth, $1.75 paper, postpaid of
The Survey.
^TAKING a busman's holiday, Dr.
Gulick has spent the year or so since
his retirement from the Federal Council
of Churches in adding yet another to his
long list of studies in international and
interracial relations. He interprets rather
optimistically the progress of Hawaii as
one of the world's demonstration centers
of amity between people of diverse stocks
and cultural antecedents, and more espe-
cially the parts played in this achieve-
ment by school and church. Yet he is
fully aware of the problems that must
be solved if there is not to be an un-
pleasant reaction. He holds that a com-
mission form of government for the
territory — now advocated in influential
quarters — by depriving the Hawaiian
population of responsible participation in
public affairs, might produce schisms in
their mutual relations, and might expose
the loyalty of Americans of Japanese
descent to a strain which does not now
exist. Partly as a result of a considerable
inflow of residents from the continental
United States, there are many situations
• of seeming discrimination against the
groups less close to the core of American
life and thought, which hypersensitive
Orientals tend to regard as symptoms of
race prejudice. A commission form of
government would accentuate such situa-
tions in number and seriousness.
BRUNO LASKER
California's Transients
NEWCOMERS AND NOMADS IN CALI-
FORNIA, by William T. Cross and Dorothy
Embry Cross. Stanford University Press. 149
pp. Price $1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
r\ URING the depression years the
young man following Horace
Greeley's advice to go west in search
of opportunity was likely to find himself
herded into a shelter or camp, the ob-
ject of a vast program of relief for the
transient homeless. Gone was the free
land for homesteading, gone the old wel-
come to the newcomer as agricultural
worker and potential consumer. Yet, as
the authors of this study point out, the
motives that drive the majority of
present day displaced and restless indi-
viduals and families are largely those
that drove the pioneer.
Early chapters discuss the special need
of aiding transients in California because
of their numbers, and outline state and
federal plans for relief and rehabilita-
tion growing out of legislation in 1933.
Later chapters point to the need of a
permanent program under federal aus-
pices with careful case work standards.
Some interesting recommendations are
made, among them : identification cards
under which a family would be recog-
nized by any public welfare agency, thus
eliminating repeated investigation; a so-
cial service agency on wheels, similar
"in scope and facility of movement" to
the highway police; extension of sub-
sistence homestead and resettlement pro-
grams to include certain transients. The
appended bibliography lists, in addition
to specific books on migrants, many cur-
rent magazine articles, government docu-
ments, monographs, special studies, and
books for background reading on Cali-
fornia history, the family and the
American community. Even Charles
Dickens's The Uncommercial Traveller
is here. The book is printed by the
offset method from typewritten copy.
Napa, Calif. ANNE ROLLER ISSLER
Answer to Youth
SECONDARY EDUCATION FOR YOUTH IN
MODERN AMERICA, by Harl R. Douglass;
a report to the American Youth Commission of
the_ American Council on Education. 137 pp.
Price $1 postpaid from the council, 744 Jack-
son Place, Washington, D. C.
V"OUTH itself, roused by its intoler-
able sufferings during the depression,
has spoken to the world in voices which
must be heard. Through forums, through
its own papers, through youth congresses,
through parades and strikes, it has voiced
demands and presented programs. The
answers of the adult world are beginning
to come in.
This report is an answer from the edu-
cational world. It surveys the field of the
needs of youth with adult detachment and
suggests a program for secondary edu-
cation which may seem conservative to
leaders of the youth movement, but will
seem radical to the mass of educators
and average American citizens. Its style
is not popular; it lacks the charm and
readableness of Charles Beard's Charter
for the Social Studies, which discusses
some of the same topics; but it is a
clear summary of the needs of youth and
some educational proposals for meeting
them.
Such a report must inevitably choose
a philosophy of education and proposals
for changing our system of education.
Professor Douglass accepts as the objec-
tive of education in a democracy the train-
ing of those individuals capable of carry-
ing on its cooperative life. Under modern
conditions that objective can be obtained
only by universal secondary education.
But a survey of our present high-
schools shows that they do not meet the
needs even of those of our youths who
are in school. Instead of rejecting the
youths who cannot or will not profit by
our present educational program, Profes-
sor Douglass proposes that we find a
program which will educate and employ
all our youths from fourteen to twenty
years. Its most important suggestion
for this new program is the admission of
sixteen to twenty-year olds to vocational
activities, on a part time basis, to meet
youth's desire to take part in the activi-
ties and responsibilities of adults. Our
youths would thus be introduced and
guided into the adult world. The ques-
tions of cost and specific changes in the
curriculum are adequately discussed.
Greenwich, Conn. MAUDE THOMPSON
Welfare Primer
WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS, A WELFARE
PRIMER; original text by Franklin H. Patter-
son. Price 75 cents from Community Chests
and Councils, Inc., 155 East 44 Street, New
York.
THIS novel booklet prepared by the
1 Buffalo, N. Y. Council of Social
Agencies in cooperation with Community
Chests and Councils, Inc. is an introduc-
tion to welfare fields "for junior and
senior highschool pupils and other stu-
dents of social service." With a Van Loon
frontispiece, it makes an appropriately
"Van Loonish" historic approach to its
subject, highlighting expressions of altru-
ism from society's earliest beginnings. It
moves swiftly to governmental and pri-
vate social agencies of today, and their
efforts for health and welfare. Interest
is heightened by an easy, not too detailed
style and suggestions for "our town" ap-
plication of the topics considered.
RUTH LERRIGO
Dangerous Motherhood
MATERNAL DEATHS— THE WAYS TO PREVEN-
TION, by laKO Galdston, M.D. Commonwealth
Fund. 115 pp. Price 75 cents, cloth; 50 cents,
paper; postpaid of the fund, 4J East 57 Street,
New York.
'"THE renewed fight to prevent the un-
necessary deaths of many thousands
of mothers during pregnancy each year
in the United States has received its
greatest recent impetus from two sources:
the careful studies of the exact causes of
these deaths and the necessary measures
to prevent them ; and the nation-wide
maternal and child health programs aided
by funds appropriated under the social
security act. This 110-page book, espe-
cially written for laymen and health
workers, presents clearly the facts of
the maternal mortality study in New
York City and other similar studies of
maternal deaths. The factors involved
and their relative importance in causing
maternal deaths are impartially dis-
cussed. Recent studies of maternal deaths
have concluded that at least one half,
and possibly two thirds, of such deaths
were preventable. By "preventable" is
meant that, if the patient had sought and
received the best medical care through-
out her entire pregnancy and at the time
of delivery, it is unlikely that death would
398
have occurred. That such care was not
obtained may be the responsibility of the
patient, the physician, or the community.
From this book and studies on which
it is based, comes the conclusion that the
reduction of the high maternal mortality
rate in this country can be obtained only
by ( 1 ) teaching women that abortion is
an extremely hazardous procedure; (2)
educating women to recognize that pre-
natal care by competent physicians
throughout the entire pregnancy is essen-
tial both to her health and to that of
the unborn child; (3) providing better
clinical facilities for the undergraduate
and graduate instruction of physicians;
(4) providing funds so that all mothers
can obtain adequate medical and nursing
care throughout pregnancy and at time
of delivery; and (5) conducting com-
munity surveys by cooperative efforts of
medical groups, health departments, and
community lay organizations. These sur-
veys would determine the adequacy of
existing facilities to provide the best
medical, nursing, and hospital care for
all expectant mothers and would provide
'or study of the maternal and infant
leathrates in a community in an effort
;o learn where preventive measures are
.nost needed.
Director EDWIN F. DAILY, M.D.
Maternal and Child Health Division
U. S. Children's Bureau
Timely Wisdom
BOARD MEMBER'S MANUAL: FOR BOARD
AND COMMITTEE MEMBERS OF PUBLIC HEALTH
XURSING SERVICES. Macmillan. 173 pp. Price
$1.50 postpaid of The Survey.
CEVEN years after its first publication
this valuable guide comes out in a
new edition, fully revised and with much
new material gathered and prepared by
a committee of the National Organiza-
tion for Public Health Nursing, Mrs.
Frederick Dellenbaugh, chairman. While
concerned primarily with boards in a
single area of service it holds many a
nugget of wisdom, both in principles and
procedures, for board members of any
social agency anywhere. An appreciative
foreword is contributed by George E.
Vincent. GERTRUDE SPRINGER
Health Educators' Handbook
HEALTH EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC, by
W. W. Bauer. M.D., and Thomas G. Hull.
Saunders. 227 pp. Price $2.50 postpaid of
The Survey.
IDEALIZING that many people who
are eager and more or less quali-
fied to help teach the public health, are
handicapped by the lack of useful infor-
mation, the authors have prepared a
handbook in public health education. Dr.
Bauer, director of health and public in-
struction for the American Medical As-
sociation, and Mr. Hull, director of the
association's scientific exhibits, have wide
experience and are eminently qualified for
this task.
"What is health?" Clear and concise
BOOKS FOR THE SOCIAL WORKER
For class use, consider
Child Welfare Case Records
Edited by WILMA WALKER
A unique collection of eighteen case records, selected from the files of seven
different child welfare agencies in the Chicago area which are concerned with
the care of dependent children. The cases presented were chosen for the
variety of problems presented. An effective textbook in child welfare courses
— used at Universities of Chicago, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Notre Dame. A
valuable guide for the case worker. $3.00; postpaid, $3.15.
Handbook on Social Case
Recording
By MARGARET COCHRAN BRISTOL
A teacher says: "The simplicity, directness and completeness of the book are
the qualities which commend it to the busy worker on the job. The com-
prehensiveness, clarity and balance of the book are the qualities which make
teachers recommend it to students." — ELIZABETH G. GARDINER, Assistant Pro-
fessor, Department of Sociology and Course in Social Work, University of
Minnesota. Second edition, cloth bound, $1.50; postpaid, $1.60.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, 5750 Ellis Avenue, Chicago
answers to this and other frequently
asked questions fundamental to public
health are given in an opening chapter
of "definitions and objectives."
Where can a would-be educator find
educational material? The second chap-
ter gives a most carefully compiled di-
rectory, naming books, their authors,
publishers and prices; magazines, selected
from the "more than 1800 journals on
medicine and allied subjects"; government
departments which stand ready to sup-
ply material, and various other sources
whence "health help" comes.
The spoken word may reach many
whom the written word would miss.
Addresses delivered at meetings or over
the radio are therefore valuable means
of spreading health education. How to
arrange for and carry out such programs
is fully described. Visual aids — motion
pictures, stereopticon slides and exhibits
— are also analyzed and discussed.
Some splendid suggestions are included
in the two closing chapters. A bibli-
ography points out where further infor-
mation can be gained. This practical
manual fills a need long felt by a very
large number of nurses, social service
workers and others in allied fields who
have been earnestly endeavoring to give
the public practical and authentic health
education.
New York BEULAH FRANCE, R.N.
For Reference
PAPERS ON THE SCIENCE OF ADMINIS-
TRATION, edited by Luther Gulick and L.
Urwick. The Institute of Public Administra-
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standing experts in the field of pub-
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ability will advance the analysis of
administration; assist in the development
of a standard nomenclature; encourage
others to criticize the hypotheses with
regard to administration therein set forth
and advance their own concepts fear-
lessly; and point the way to areas greatly
in need of exploration. The impetus for
the publication of this volume was the
fact that no copies of these documents
were available in any Washington library
when they were needed by the President's
Committee on Administrative Manage-
ment. LOULA D. LASKER
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THE PUBLIC HEALTH NURSE, 54 pp.
FINE ARTS IN PHILANTHROPY, 61 pp.,
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over Bank and Trust Company, New York.
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THE TOWNSHIP AND BOROUGH SYSTEM
OF POOR RELIEF IN PENNSYLVANIA,
by David K. Bruner. 175 pp. Price $1.50
postpaid from the author, division of social
work, University of Pittsburgh, Pa.
THIS exhaustive study of the county as
compared with the small district unit for
poor relief administration was made by
Mr. Bruner in 1934, in the course of a
state-wide poor relief study by the Penn-
sylvania Department of Welfare. While
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largely historic and comparative, it com-
bines the thoroughness of the Ph. D.
thesis with the enduring practical interest
attaching to studies of economy in public
expenditure.
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